


I Want You

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-12 12:20:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 66,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: Goes AU right after 2x12 "Disconnect." Michael and Lincoln have met up with Sara, but then Michael decides to pursue the clues Sara's father left alone, leaving them behind. Michael turns himself in and a whole lot of angst unfolds. (Lincoln/Sara)





	1. Save Sara, Save the World

**Author's Note:**

> Each of the chapters for this story are named. The prologue title stemmed from a fan wanting the powers that be at Prison Break to use the line "Save the Doctor, Save the World," as a reference to the show Heroes (Save the Cheerleader, Save the World). My version became this.

It was the shower coming on at 3:37am that woke Lincoln up, but it was the half-naked, partially wet woman who climbed into bed with him twenty minutes later that made him hard.   
  
“I can’t get warm,” she muttered against his bare shoulder, as though she expected him to be awake. Maybe she could see his hard-on even in the darkness.   
  
He lifted an arm, pulling her closer even as he said, “It’s like 80 degrees outside.”   
  
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “When I’m scared, I get cold.”   
  
“There’s no reason to be scared. Michael wouldn’t have left us here if we weren’t safe.” Lincoln felt this was a reasonable argument, but when her knee edged up over his thigh, he shoved his other hand down there to keep her from easing her leg all the way up over his. “I’m naked, Sara,” he warned.   
  
“I know,” she said, and Lincoln swallowed about forty swear words. All the good ones, too, sliding down his throat like terms of endearment, things he wanted to say to her, do to her. His hand relaxed and her leg finished its journey up over his.   
  
If she knew, then this had to be what he thought it was. He wasn’t in prison so long he couldn’t read the signs. He wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see what a bad idea it was when Michael had said he would take the key Sara’s father left her and go to the bank alone that held the safety deposit box. Lincoln knew he had to stay, Jane and LJ would be meeting up with them within a few days, and Sara couldn’t go, she needed time to recover from all she had been through.   
  
But still.   
  
The prison doc, outside of prison, was the only woman Lincoln had been aware of or alone with in a very long time. And it hadn’t been a very long car ride from picking Sara up to getting to the safe house Jane had found for them, and it had taken even less time than that for Lincoln to know that Sara might be half in love his brother, but she didn’t know what to do with it. And maybe they’d had sex when they saw each other during the three days Linc and Michael were apart, but they definitely hadn’t before Michael took off again to find the tape their father had told them about. Scared, barely escaping a madman’s hands, and having stitched herself up, she was looking for some life affirmation.   
  
Lincoln was just…Lincoln. And horny. And three years past his resistance level.   
  
When she scooted even closer to him, he could feel her breasts through the thin t-shirt she wore and even if he’d thought about not doing it, that would have chased that idea right out of his head. Breasts hadn’t been anywhere near him in such a long time. He smoothed a hand down her arm, over the curve of her hip and across her ass. Then his hand slid up inside the t-shirt against the warm, soft skin of her back and he said lowly, “You don’t feel cold.”   
  
Her head turned into his shoulder and her teeth grazed his skin as she levered herself up on to him. “It’s on the inside, the coldness.” Lincoln choked back a groan as she eased over him, and his erection pressed between their bellies. Her lips bounced off his chin and hit the end of his nose before finally finding his actual mouth. Her lips were cool, but inside her mouth was hot, and he found it hard to believe that there was coldness, figurative or literal, in her anywhere.   
  
He could have stood flat-footed and recited a long list of reasons why he shouldn’t do this, but when her tongue danced over the tip of his, he knew the only moving he was going to do was to tuck her underneath him as he settled himself between her thighs. The sooner, the better. The sooner, the… “Oh, fuck,” he groaned when her hand skimmed his side and he felt her lift herself up so it could wrap around his cock. “No, no, no…” he said, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and reaching for her hand at the same moment. “Sara, no,” he commanded, his voice fierce.   
  
Her head rose up from his and in the darkness he could feel her eyes scalding a path across his face. “Not ‘no, we’re not doing this’ but ‘no, don’t touch me there, if you want this to be longer than a 30 second show’ okay?”   
  
“Lincoln,” she said, her voice hardly distinguishable. “Why wouldn’t he wait until I could go with him?”   
  
Lincoln pulled her hand away from where their bodies touched and said softly, “Save Lincoln, kill the world, save Sara, save the world.” It was the truth that had burned in him as he watched his brother leave, as he thought of every incident that brought them to this moment. When he fucked Sara it would just be further proof that Michael never should have done any of it, and despite the words he’d tried to give Michael to excuse them both, it never sounded sincere. It never was sincere. It never would be.   
  
“Make me warm.” Her voice laid the words against his lips and her body trembled, waiting for him to do as she asked.   
  
Rolling them over so he was on top of her, he pulled the t-shirt up over her head and flung it away. With no light in the room, the only thing he could do to find his way down her body was follow his hands closely with his mouth and his tongue. At her neck, he licked and sucked and nipped with his teeth until her hands urged him lower. At her breasts he rolled her pebble-hard nipples with his thumb and forefinger and then flicked them with his tongue until she screamed his name, begging him for more. Against her stomach, he mouthed the words  _forgive me_ , and he had no idea who he sought forgiveness from. Against the wet heat between her legs he drank of her essence until he trembled and shook so badly he could hardly move upward to get his aching flesh to the place it needed to be. By the time he propped himself up on strong but empty arms, he could feel the heat of sweat all along the curves of her body and her legs wrapped eagerly around his hips. She impaled herself, and her hands clamped on his buttocks as she undulated under him in short strokes and he growled her name against the bruises he’d left on her neck.   
  
On the verge, he somehow pulled back at the last moment. She gasped as he rolled again, this time putting her back in the position of power, and his hands found her breasts, the beaded crests stabbing into his palms. She leaned into his hands, her hips moving steadily but slowly enough he didn’t explode before he was ready for it to be over. He wished for a light for a moment, so he could see her hair trailing over her shoulders, so he could see her head thrown back as she moaned and gasped with delight. He wished for something to make this a separate piece of the broken shards of his life. But he knew it was the sharpest, largest piece, the piece that would sever all the rest of it.   
  
And somehow he gloried in it anyway, his hips bucking hungrily under her body, his hands spreading wide, catching her nipples between his fingers and spasming with joy when he felt her tighten around him and shout her triumph as she approached the peak of her pleasure. She fell forward on his chest as his mind spun out with the white hotness of his own fulfillment. Her breath flowed over his skin and Lincoln realized that, other than a few joyful moments that lasted only a heartbeat’s amount of time with LJ, this was the first time he’d felt anything other than overwhelming despair or frustrated anger in days, weeks. This was the first time he’d had any kind of release, for his mind or his body.   
  
When he also realized Sara was asleep on top of him, he knew the same was true for her.  
  


 

  
  
To answer his ringing cell phone, Lincoln had to untwine his limbs from around Sara and roll over towards the bedside table. “Yeah?” he croaked.  
  
“Dad? Are you guys in there? We’ve been pounding on the door for like ten minutes.”  
  
“Oh, shit,” Lincoln groaned, sitting upright and nearly dumping Sara out of the twin bed they were lying in. “Hey, LJ,” he said loudly, which caused Sara’s head to whip around on the pillow. “Sorry, buddy, we—I’m still sleepin’, uh, just a sec. I’ll be right there.”  
  
Scrambling out of the bed and grabbing his pants, he muttered over his shoulder, “They were supposed to call me and let me know when they were getting here.” He glanced at Sara in time to see her jumping out of the bed and looking around frantically for her t-shirt. It was on his side of the bed, on the floor, and he stooped down, picked it up and threw it at her. She caught it against her chest and made for the door. “Sara,” he said, stopping her naked body from leaving his sight too quickly. “Mike can never know about this.”  
  
“I know,” she said quietly. She raised her chin to look into his eyes and a small smile curved her lips. “I know,” she repeated. Turning, she left the room, he presumed, to go back to her own.  
  
Hurrying out to the front door, Lincoln yanked it open to see LJ standing on the step, looking a little impatient, but relieved to see his father. Bare-chested, with his pants barely buttoned up, he dragged LJ into a hug and smiled at Jane over his son’s head. “Hey, sorry about that. Didn’t get to sleep until late, and I thought you guys were gonna call when you were close.”  
  
Jane eyed him candidly and Lincoln could feel the rush of heat in his cheeks. It’s not that anything could really embarrass him at this point, it was more the idea that Jane could tell what had kept him up most of the night. “We made better time than I anticipated,” she said. “LJ drove half the night while I slept.” She made a production of checking her watch. “It’s nearly noon. You guys on a bender?”  
  
Lincoln laughed, and released LJ, his hands cupping the boy’s face to look at the little scar on his cheek. “You got the stitches out, okay?” he asked, rubbing a thumb over the red mark.  
  
“Yeah, Dad. Everything’s fine. Where’s Uncle Mike?” LJ asked pushing through the door. “Uncle Mike!” he called.  
  
“Not here, and hush up, Sara’s still sleeping.”  
  
“Sara? Who’s Sara?” LJ asked.  
  
“Where is your brother?” Jane demanded.  
  
As Lincoln gave them the short version to get them up to date as to where Michael was and why Sara was there with them, Jane walked around the living room, and he could tell she was checking things out. Making sure it was safe, for all of them. The jacket she wore moved with her body and occasionally he could see the outline of her gun at the small of her back.  
  
They already knew Aldo was dead, and Lincoln had wondered if that might be a hardship for Jane. He wondered about the nature of their relationship and why Jane was so loyal to his father, but there hadn’t been time to get a history, and now they were sort of stuck with each other.  
  
“When did Michael leave?” Jane asked.  
  
“Two days ago. He’s supposed to call me tomorrow at a certain time to let me know what’s going on.”  
  
LJ started to say something, but as his mouth opened, Sara appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in jeans and a white button up. “Hi,” Lincoln’s son said and Lincoln didn’t miss the way LJ’s eyes goggled a bit. He turned to watch Sara descend the stairs himself, and felt a clenching in his gut that hadn’t been there before. Her climbing into bed with him had not resulted in one round of lovemaking. The reason they had been dead asleep at noon was because they had only slept for an hour before going at it again, and then slept again only a few hours before he awoke to the best blowjob of his life. In fact, if Jane and LJ hadn’t arrived when they did, Lincoln couldn’t help but feel a tightening in his groin at the idea of what they’d be doing right now.  
  
She was a beautiful woman, and there was no denying that. But the fact that he had carnal knowledge of her definitely made his temperature a little higher than normal. “Sara Tancredi, this is my son, LJ, and this is Jane. LJ, Jane, Sara.”  
  


  
  
The next day, Michael called exactly at 6pm and told Lincoln exactly what he wanted to hear. He had the tape, and their father had been right about Sara’s father. Michael’s big plan for this, which was already in motion, included a public broadcast on the news. “It will probably break into regular programming, I’d guess, in about 30 minutes.”  
  
“Are you all right?” Lincoln asked. He could feel the piercing eyes of Jane, LJ and Sara all along his spine, but he didn’t turn to face them. He wanted to know what was going on before he gave anything away.  
  
“I’m fine,” Michael said, and Lincoln could hear the grin in his tone. “Really, Linc, it will all be over in about 30 minutes.”  
  
“You need to get the hell out then, they’re going to arrest you, you know that.”  
  
“I’ve already surrendered. This is my one phone call.”  
  
“What? What the fuck are you thinking?” Lincoln shouted. “That was not the plan!”  
  
“It was my plan. You had to stay there, but I’ve got to appear sorry. I’ll get leniency for turning myself in.”  
  
“You’re a sitting duck, that’s what you are!”  
  
“No, Linc. It’s okay. It’s all okay.”  
  
“Well, excuse me if I find that a little hard to believe!” Lincoln could feel the rage boiling up inside him and if it hadn’t been Michael’s only phone call, he would have hung up on him.  
  
“Linc, trust me. You do trust me, don’t you?”  
  
“Don’t try that shit now. You know this isn’t about you, it’s about them, all of them wanting to kill us.”  
  
“They won’t be able to kill us when everyone will be hunting them. Trust me,” Michael’s emphasis on those last words tore a bloody path through Lincoln as he felt Sara’s hand on his arm.  
  
Lincoln’s eyes flew to hers as she moved around in front of him, so he couldn’t not look at her. Her eyes held concern, but Lincoln didn’t know if it was for him or for Michael or both. Her hand slid up his arm, and her fingers curled around it, her touch familiar and comforting, whatever motivated it. “Do you want to talk to Sara?” Lincoln asked.  
  
“No, not now. I need you to call a guy named Doug Gillespie for me. He’s the best defense attorney in Illinois.” Lincoln signaled Jane for a piece of paper and pen and wrote down the number Michael gave him. “We won’t have any trouble getting the best, because the publicity on this is going to be out of this world. Call him, retain him, and then get your butt back to Chicago, but wait until tomorrow. Let it all explode, Linc, and then come home. That’s what you deserve.”  
  
Lincoln’s eyes closed, shutting out the number on the piece of paper in front of him, shutting out Sara’s inquisitive gaze, shutting out everything except the sound of his brother’s voice. “What about you?”  
  
“It’s going to work out. Call Doug Gillespie. They’re keeping me at Statesville until anything gets decided. Linc,” Michael said, again, the deep, resonant sound of his little brother’s voice took on an intensity that ate his heart. “You’re going to be free, and we’ve brought them down. It was all I started out to do plus the one little thing I could set right. I feel great about it. Don’t worry.”  



	2. The Devil Wants a Fellow With a Weakness He Can Wrap His Arms Around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

_3 weeks later..._

  
  
“Take an apple with your lunch.”  
  
“I don’t really like apples. I’ll just take cookies.”  
  
“Your dad finished off those cookies last night. You’ll have to take a piece of fruit. How about an orange?”  
  
Sara turned toward LJ with the fruit bowl in her hands. “Pear? Plum? You need some fruit.”  
  
LJ looked down at the bowl and then up into her face. “I’m glad my mom wasn’t a doctor. She never forced me to take fruit in my school lunch.”  
  
“Blame your father, he’s the one who ate your cookies.”  
  
Reluctantly, LJ stretched his hand out and took an orange. Opening the brown paper bag that held the rest of his lunch, he placed it inside and gave her a half smile that was tinged with pure pleasure. “See ya tonight, Sara.”  
  
“Don’t forget,” she said as he made his way to the front door. “Jane’s gonna pick you up. We’ll see you at the courthouse.”  
  
“Oh, yeah. Okay. See you then. Tell Uncle Mike I’ve got my fingers crossed for him.”  
  
“I will.”  
  
Sara glanced back at the clock as LJ left. It was almost 8am, and she had an hour before she had to be at the clinic. She walked back into the kitchen and found an oatmeal packet to make for her breakfast.  
  
She could hear the shower running, so she knew Lincoln was up and moving, and that he had a bunch of interviews. They were finding out today how much longer Michael would have to be in jail. The great thing, with all the publicity that Lincoln had gotten (he’d been on Oprah, Diane Sawyer had come to Chicago to interview him, and every local reporter that was hoping this interview might propel them to a higher station within the media world), was that all the new charges Michael might have faced were dropped. However, the judge had been obviously distrustful of Michael’s apparent sorrow over what he’d done, and had said he would consider over the weekend if Michael would have to serve any time on his original sentence.  
  
Sara didn’t know what she wanted the judge to say. Of course, she didn’t want Michael in prison, he didn’t belong there, not at all. But as she and Lincoln and LJ had taken up house together, merely for the sake of convenience until Jane could access Aldo’s accounts that had been frozen in the wake of the Conspiracy unraveling, Sara had found that her attraction to Michael’s brother had had nothing to do with him being the only one there. Their one night together haunted her, and not just in the way she expected it to. She went to visit Michael every day at Statesville, but every day she came home to Lincoln, and even though he hadn’t even touched her casually since they left the house in New Mexico she longed for him to. She longed for him, period.   
  
In her mind she likened him to Morphine, but luckily for her his interest in her had waned with the satisfaction she had given him that one time. Of course, she had instigated the whole thing, and he was a man after all who had been without for a long time. She didn’t delude herself for a moment that she had been anything other than a warm, wet place to land after so long a march across the desert.  
  
And besides that, she was pretty sure something was going on between him and Jane. And she had Michael, anyway, right? Even though that didn’t feel all that certain, as their conversations were like first dates every time they saw each other, an awkwardness that they had never had before, but they doggedly kept trying to overcome.  
  
“Morning,” he said, walking past the kitchen table where she sat eating her oatmeal.  
  
“Morning,” she replied.  
  
“LJ get off to school okay?”  
  
“Yes, dear,” she said sarcastically and he looked over his shoulder at her, grinning.  
  
“I try to avoid him the mornings because he’s pissed about having to go to summer school. It’s like he remembers every morning that he’s mad at me.”  
  
“He was really mad this morning because you ate his cookies last night.”  
  
“Oh, yeah. Well, at least that’s something I can fix. I’ll go to the store today. You want to give me a list? I’ll pick up whatever we need.”  
  
“You’ve got all those interviews, I don’t think you’ll have time to go shopping.”  
  
“I’ll get Jane to do it.”  
  
“Oh, okay. Great.” The bitterness in her voice wasn’t well disguised, and Lincoln looked over at her, but didn’t say anything. Sara finished her oatmeal as Lincoln perused the items in the pantry cupboard. Rinsing her bowl out a moment later, she asked, “What are you looking for?”  
  
“Pancake mix,” he responded.  
  
“It’s on the top shelf.” His head instantly tipped back, but he wasn’t seeing it, so Sara stepped closer. “Right there, behind the flour.” She stretched up on to her tiptoes and pointed. She could reach it from her position, and considering Lincoln had a few inches on her, she knew he’d be able to get it with no problem when he saw it. He glanced at her and she saw out of the corner of her eye, a smirk work its way on to his face. “You see it, don’t you?” she asked, still stretched precariously by his side.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, his eyes dancing. “But go on, why don’t you get it down for me?”  
  
Sara spun just slightly on her right foot and planted her elbow in his face. It was partly on purpose, but at the last moment she lost her balance and hit him harder than she intended. “Ow!” he yelped, stumbling backward and as she was already in motion, it didn’t take much for her to follow him. His arms flailed and they both went down on the kitchen floor in a heap.  
  
Giggling helplessly, Sara tried to pull his hands away from his face, because his fingers were clutching his left eye and he was half-laughing, half-moaning in pain. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you...” she said, but the laughter got stronger and the validity of her apology flew right out the window.  
  
When she finally got her fingers around his wrists to pull his hands away from his face, she saw he had the eye squinted shut and the pain he was suffering was real. “Come on, get up,” she said, and she helped him sit upright before turning and hitting the ice cube button on her fridge door. Ice shot out into her hand and she turned around and shoved it up against his eye. “That’s all you need is a black eye while you’re on national television pleading for your brother’s life.”  
  
They got up on their feet and moved towards the sink as Lincoln said, “It’s all right. You didn’t hit me that hard, you just got me right in the eyeball. Your pointy elbows are sharp little talons.” One of his hands wrapped around one of her ‘pointy elbows’ as she pulled the drawer open that had Ziploc baggies in it.  
  
“Here, put the ice in this,” she said, turning into him. He did as she commanded and she sealed the baggie shut before lifting it back to his eye. When her eyes met his only good one, Sara realized she was closer to him than she’d been since she was naked with him and he still had a hand wrapped around her elbow. “Sorry,” she said with more sincerity now that she wasn’t laughing.  
  
“It’s all right. That’s what I get for teasing you, I guess. I’m just glad this weapon wasn’t near my crotch.” His fingers moved over her elbow, and Sara couldn’t help the feeling of heat rising in her chest. It wasn’t a caress, there was nothing sexual about his hand around her elbow, but she wanted Lincoln, and he didn’t have to touch her to make her feel that way. So any touching was just too much.  
  
She stared at him for far too long, and finally his hand came up to hold the ice baggie against his face and she began to make her retreat. Only, then the hand on her elbow tightened and she was suddenly slammed into his chest and his lips descended and the ice pack went flying. Then his arms were around her and she was opening her mouth to his tongue and rubbing herself against him mindlessly. Right there, in the middle of the kitchen his mouth kissed hers so intimately that if she really believed he’d forgotten the night they’d spent together, that thought was gone with the wind. He wanted her, and she could feel just how much, and he was  _Michael’s_  brother and this was so wrong, but just like every time she’d ever shot up in her life, it felt so amazingly good that she didn’t want to stop it.  
  
It was his hands sliding into the back of her pajama pants and cupping her bare bottom that brought her to her senses. She slid her arms from around his neck to wedge between them, pushing back from him just marginally. “Lincoln, I can’t...” Only she could, she knew she could, and she would, but what she couldn’t do was sit and look into Michael’s face and not think of Lincoln inside her just hours before.   
  
He let her go so fast that she stumbled backward against the counter. He didn’t say anything; he just left the room. Pressing her fingers to her trembling lips, she blinked back tears of frustration. When she’d escaped from almost drowning, when she’d stitched up her own arm with sewing thread, when she’d received the phone call that told her they were all right and they were coming to get her, in her heart the only thing she had wanted was the protection Michael seemed to believe he could give her.  
  
When she’d been told that she held the answers to Lincoln’s freedom and to the solving of her own father’s murder, not to mention the long list of other innocent people whose lives had been lost, she’d felt some sense of vindication that she hadn’t let ‘Lance’ know what she had in her possession the entire time he tortured her.  
  
The irony was not lost on her that she survived all that, accomplished the impossible, the improbable in fact, made it to safety because of these two brothers only to be confronted by a problem greater than all those. She’d heard someone say once when she was on her surgical rotation as an intern that there were worse things than dying. As a then 24-year-old medical student, she couldn’t have imagined anything worse.  
  
Sara knew now, the judge telling Michael today that he would have to remain in jail for any length of time would be worse than dying for her. She needed him here, now, with her. She needed that feeling back, the one where his voice was the only voice that could bring calm. She needed to remember that the only thing she wanted and thought she could never have was the convict who had saved her life, on more than one occasion.  
  
She needed to forget the way her body longed for something that wasn’t good for it.  



	3. Every Time I'm Around You I'm On Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

Lincoln climbed out on to the fire escape and looked down at Sara. She was sitting just below him, on the part of the fire escape that was between her apartment and the one just downstairs from hers. The setting sun pierced his eyes and he realized why she had gone down just half a floor, where the sun couldn't get to her. Turning his back to the warmth of the orange ball, he was just opposite from her and could see her through the corrugated metal.   
  
"You all right?" he asked.   
  
She didn't look up, but he heard her voice loud and clear, "What do you think?"   
  
"I think you didn't get what you wanted today. None of us did, Michael especially. But 18 months isn't as long as five years. And I have at least learned to be grateful for what I do have. He'll be right here in Chicago at Statesville. You won't even have to drive up to Joliet. Isn't that a good thing?"   
  
Her head snapped up and she glared at him through the gaps in the metal staircase. "Lincoln, shut the hell up. Between you and Michael and all your 'positive talk,' I could easily get an overdose of Prozac."   
  
"Sara, all I'm saying is it could be worse."   
  
"And I said shut up. I know it could be worse, but right now, it feels pretty damn bad anyway."   
  
He didn't respond right away because she had said to shut up twice in less than a minute, and so he thought being quiet for a few minutes might be good enough. Michael was required by the court to finish his initial sentence up until when he would be eligible for parole. The judge emphasized the fact that she was not influenced by media or appeals on the basis of popularity and would only feel justice had been served if Michael stayed in jail for what she referred to as " a short period of time." Lincoln had had a few choice words for the judge that he just said to Jane and LJ in back of the courtroom, and he'd gone into the restroom and punched the wall in frustration, but beyond that, he knew there was nothing more he could do. He had appeared on every talk show and recounted the story so many times, and every day the broadcasters of television, radio and newspapers everywhere delivered the latest developments in the Impeachment of President Reynolds and all of her cohorts.   
  
The judge just didn't want to look soft, and when Jane tried to explain the trappings of a woman in a traditional man's role, Lincoln had looked at her like he was going to choke her and she hadn't finished her thought.   
  
"The good news is you're going to get your life back. LJ and I will be outta here within a few days, now that Dad's money is available again. That's a good thing, right, Sara?" Lincoln leaned slightly over the edge of the railing to look down at her, but she wasn't looking at him now that she didn't have a venomous glare to direct his way. "You won't have to worry about dirty clothes in the bathroom and LJ drinking from the carton."   
  
"You do that, too," she said so quietly he couldn't hear her.   
  
"What?" he pressed, cupping his hand around his ear.   
  
She tipped her head back to look up at him, and her hair flowed down over her back. The sunlight hit her just right and the auburn strands turned to burnished gold. Lincoln had never been a guy who noticed hair, he was more interested in asses and breasts, but Sara's hair was beautiful. And the hair between her legs was the exact same color. Not that he needed to think about that, not while they were discussing her distress about his brother being in jail for another year and a half. "I said," she repeated loudly, "that you drink from the carton too. I've seen you both do that." A smile worked its way on to her face and Lincoln found himself thinking about all the expressions he'd become familiar with during the month he'd spent with her. He wished, not for the first time, that she wasn't so attractive. Her mouth distracted him easily, and everything else about her left him turned on most of the time.   
  
It was a good thing he and LJ were getting their own place, because even though she had turned him down that morning, he didn't think taking no for an answer would become his strong suit any time soon. "Yeah, well, any bad habits LJ has, you can bet he got them from me."   
  
"I've actually liked living with you guys. It's been nice having you around. I'll miss you."   
  
"Well, we'll still see each other. I mean, Michael would expect us to watch out for you."   
  
"Oh, sure, because I need a keeper."   
  
"It's not like that, you know that."   
  
"Not just a duty? Not just something you'll do to keep the guilt at bay?"   
  
Looking down at her, he knew what she was asking. They had never talked about it, the night they spent together, and that morning in her kitchen was the only time he had lost control with her the entire time they'd been living together. Of course, usually LJ was around, and sometimes Jane, and that definitely helped keep him in line. Some days he even thought he might be able to see her as Michael's girl, but then she'd do something and his cock would respond and he knew he was just bullshitting himself.   
  
He'd never shared anything with Michael like this, and he didn't want to share now. But if ever there was a time to appeal to his better nature, assuming he had one, this was that time. His brother was still paying the price for helping him, and what was Lincoln doing? Imagining Michael's girlfriend naked, and under him, and he was getting hard just thinking about it.   
  
He couldn't remember what Sara had said, or how he was supposed to respond, so he broke eye contact with her and blew out a heavy breath. "You'll learn the difference between me and Mike. I'm like a friggin' train wreck you can't stop yourself from watching; he's like this graceful ballet that you paid a lot of money to see, but it was worth every penny." He glanced down at her again. "It will be worth the wait. Trust me."   
  
She didn't respond; but her eyes examined his face and some sort of comprehension seemed to come over her. She nodded her head and moved to come up the metal stairs. Lincoln shuffled back towards the apartment window so she could get into the small space with him. "I know the difference between you, Lincoln. Don't think for even a moment I didn't know the difference."   
  
He didn't know what she meant exactly, but it felt like a compliment, and that wasn't something he needed from her. Not if he was going to turn around and go back inside like they were just friends.   
  
Because they weren't anything else, even if he couldn't remember ever wanting anyone like he wanted her.   
  
Her hand reached up and touched his cheek softly. Before he could give in to any baser instincts, LJ's head appeared in the open window. "Hey, are we just fending for ourselves tonight or what? I'm hungry."   
  
Sara leaned slightly to the left so she could see LJ just past Lincoln's shoulder. "Order a pizza."   
  
"All right!" LJ crowed, disappearing from view.   
  
Her hand skated from his cheek down to his shoulder and she gave him a little shove. "Nothing depresses him, huh?" she asked.   
  
Lincoln chuckled and shook his head as he turned and stuck his leg through the window. "Michael might have to stay at Statesville for awhile, but we still have to eat." He paused, halfway through the window. "Sara, I mean it. You won't be sorry if you wait for him."   
  
She glanced over her shoulder, up the alleyway behind her apartment. She did that occasionally, faded away right in front of him so that he didn't know where she'd gone or what she was thinking about. When she looked back at him, her eyes were shiny with tears. She didn't say anything; she only nodded.  
  


  
  
Lincoln found it funny how much stuff he and LJ had acquired in such a short amount of time. They had multiple boxes of things, and as Jane drove away with a carload, he turned to see Sara and LJ coming up the sidewalk with the last of it.  
  
Their new apartment was all the way across town and it took 30 minutes to get to Sara's if traffic wasn't bad. He didn't like being that far from her, but he didn't like the feeling of not liking being that far from her more. She didn't need him, and the farther apart they were the better.  
  
LJ hugged Sara with ease and then said, "Once we've got furniture, we'll have you come to dinner. And we'll actually cook something, not order take out!" he said enthusiastically.  
  
"Sounds good," she said, ruffling his hair. Lincoln smiled inwardly. He would guess LJ would love it if Sara saw him as the man he thought he was as opposed to a little kid, but when she ran her fingers through his hair, he actually blushed and turned away rather quickly to climb into the car.   
  
Standing in front of her, saying good-bye of a sort, it felt...almost wrong. He wondered if this was the way Michael felt when he was around Sara, because if it was, it sure explained a lot. It explained kicking Bellick in the head, it explained the insanity it had been to keep in touch with her as they were trying to leave the country, it explained the fervent need to call her and make sure she was all right. All Lincoln did know was he'd never asked Michael to explain it-there hadn't been time-and now he felt something akin to all those things, like leaving her here alone was the wrong thing to do when he knew what the truly wrong thing to do was and he had already done it.  
  
She made the first move and stepped up to him. Carefully she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, waited a beat and then let her body brush against his. That's all it took for him to feel a reaction start in his lower body, so he circled her body with a quick, hard squeeze and then let her go like she was on fire.  
  
"We'll call you," he said, and he half-jogged around the car to the driver's side. Once an entire car was between them he hazarded a look at her face. She looked-disappointed? Sad? Relieved? All of the above?  
  
It had been at least 45 seconds since he'd spoken and she shook her head and said, "Sure you will," but he knew it meant, No, you won't. And he echoed the unspoken words with, You're right.  
  


  
  
Even though Aldo had saved a lot of money (and by a lot, Lincoln acknowledged, more than he would ever see in his lifetime even if he magically had a college degree), Lincoln didn't feel right not doing anything. So since he was done with the talk show circuit, and LJ was locked into summer school, he started going on job interviews. Since he only had manual labor experience, he went back to the places he'd worked before: the docks, constructions sites and warehouses, but he was now a big time celebrity and nobody took him seriously when he said he wanted a job. Instead they wanted to chat him up and ask him a bunch of stuff that was none of their business, so he found himself home in the middle of the third day of job hunting rearranging the living room furniture he and LJ had picked out and had delivered the day before.  
  
His hand fondled his cell phone and he thought about calling Sara too many times to count. He knew what his problem was. It was bigger than wanting to fuck Sara until the end of time. He'd been going full steam ahead for so long, constantly focused on everything except what he needed to deal with, and dealing with it wasn't something he wanted to do.  
  
But with no job, and Michael in jail, and his life basically handed back to him on a silver platter, there was no avoiding it anymore. His phone started vibrating against his hand, startling him. "Hello?"  
  
"Hey, Linc, it's Jane. I need some advice."  
  
"What's up?" he asked, sitting down on the sofa he'd just shoved up against the wall under the big picture window.  
  
"I've got two job offers. One from the feds, one from the local Chicago PD. Both consulting, not in the field, although with the feds, I'd travel around the state no doubt."  
  
"Shut up, you get two job offers in one day, and I can't buy a job? Hey, that's an idea. Maybe if I tell them I'll pay them, maybe someone will give me a job."  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"I have no fuckin' idea. Take the fed job. Illinois is a nice state. Not that you know, Cali girl."  
  
"You really think so?"  
  
"It's got to pay better, it's the feds. Travel? Why not? Don't you want it?"  
  
"I don't know what I want. Who knows if I'll even stay in Illinois."  
  
"You'll stay."  
  
"What makes you so sure?"  
  
"We're here. We're the only family you've got, honey. You can't go anywhere. LJ would have a heart attack."  
  
She sighed and said softly, "I would hate to be away from you guys, too."  
  
"Take the fed job, you can travel when we get on your nerves and come home to us when it's over."  
  
"Okay, smart ass. I'll see you tomorrow, right?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. LJ's birthday."  
  
"Don't forget to call Sara, you know he'd want he there too."  
  
"Right, will do. See ya tomorrow." Flipping his phone shut, Lincoln pressed the device into his forehead hard enough to leave a mark. He looked at the clock, scribbled a note to LJ and went out the door.  
  


  
  
Knocking on her door was harder than he thought it would be. It had been a week since he and LJ left, so part of him felt comfortable just walking in, he had lived there for a month after all, but the other part of him knew that coming back here was some kind of statement. He didn't know what he was saying, but it was screaming off of him and his fear was choking him when she opened the door.  
  
"I didn't know if you'd be home from work yet," he said, his eyes sliding over her white tank top and blue plaid pajama pants that hung loosely on her hips. The strip of skin between her tank top hem and her belly button only peeked at him briefly before his fingers traced the line from the center to the outer edges of her hip bones.  
  
"I didn't think you'd ever show up here again," she said, her brown eyes widening and dilating as his fingers stroked over her skin.  
  
"I shouldn't be here, we both know that."  
  
"Yes, we do," she said softly as her hand wrapped around the back of his neck.  
  
When his lips brushed over hers he whispered, "As long as we agree."  



	4. The Lion's Only Looking For Something He Can Sink His Teeth Into

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

When Lincoln dumped her on the futon sofa and stripped her panties and lounge pants off all in one fell swoop, Sara was breathless with wanting him, with needing him inside her. Even though he didn't enter her as quickly as she would have liked (it appeared he never just went for the end goal, which seemed somewhat incongruous with what she thought she knew about him), when his tongue landed between her legs she shouted his name and her fingers combed through his hair, gripping far too tightly.   
  
His head popped up and he reached up with one hand. "Ease off, baby," he said, tugging against her clenched fingers.   
  
"Don't tease me, Lincoln, just fuck me. Please. I've been wanting this every day since..."   
  
"Michael got sentenced to 18 months?"   
  
Her legs were spread, her knees against his shoulders, which would have been funny if she wasn't two strokes away from orgasming with very little provocation. Had his tongue continued its activities she might have missed the tone of his question. She couldn't respond to what he wasn't asking, so instead she pulled his head towards her own and licked his lips up and down. She opted for the word, "Longer," and jerked him closer when he still looked as though he wanted to go down on her instead of joining their bodies. "Now. We can play later. Now, please, Lincoln. Inside. Now."   
  


  
  
Several sweaty hours later, she lay on her stomach on the futon and his head rested against the small of her back. "What's LJ doing?" she asked.   
  
"Homework, I hope."   
  
"Where does he think you are?"   
  
"Out, looking for a job."   
  
"At," her head came up off the sofa to look at the clock, "7:18 in the evening?"   
  
"He's 16, he doesn't know. Which reminds me..."   
  
"He's 16, not 6, Lincoln. Are you high? He's going to know you were out doing something."   
  
"Um...I'm the dad, not him. It's okay."   
  
"What if he asks where you've been?" She turned to look at him over her shoulder. He was stark naked, sitting on her living room rug, leaning against the futon in all his glory, with his head tipped back against her body. For a moment the pure beauty of it made her wish she hadn't turned the conversation the direction she just did. Instead of this conversation she just wanted to admire the slowly fading glistening spots of exertion on his chest and envision trailing her tongue along the imaginary line bisecting his abdomen. She was too exhausted to do anything more than think about it, but when his head swiveled and he looked at her, she knew it didn't matter what she was thinking, they were going to have to deal with what she'd said.   
  
"I'll tell him I was with Jane. Does that make you feel better?"   
  
"Lincoln..."   
  
"I came over here for a reason," he said, abruptly making her realize she wasn't the only one who didn't want the conversation to go bad this early.   
  
"What for?"   
  
"Tomorrow's LJ's birthday. Well, not really, but we're celebrating. His birthday was a couple days after the escape, so well, you know. Anyway, Jane reminded me that LJ would want you to be there."   
  
"She did, did she?" Sara asked, returning her head to its resting position on the sofa.   
  
"It was just an excuse."   
  
"What was?"   
  
"To come over here. Her reminding me was just an excuse to come over here and..."   
  
"Why didn't you just screw Jane?"   
  
She felt his head leave her back and suddenly the tension in the room was as thick as it could be if they were discussing Michael. "What?" he asked, the word a perfect combination of incredulity and hurt.   
  
"Never mind," Sara said.   
  
"Do we need to talk about this? I thought you might be the one woman in the world I could sleep with who wouldn't need an eulogy afterwards."   
  
"I said, never mind."   
  
"Fuck," he muttered and his fingertips slid against her side as he got to his feet.   
  
Stretching a hand up and rolling over on to her back, she snagged his fingers before he could get too far. "I said, never mind."   
  
He paused, and she could almost see the anger coming off him in red waves. She knew she sparked it and it involved her slightly; it was more about what they were trying so hard not to talk about, but it was interesting to watch him rein it in, slowly and powerfully. His eyes lingered on the exposed portions of her body that his fingers and lips had frequented already before they drifted to her face. "I don't want to screw Jane," he said succinctly.   
  
"Only me?" she asked, smiling at the idea that it flattered her anyway.   
  
"Right," he muttered, and he pulled his hand away gently. "There's only one woman I want to  _screw_." This time he managed to put a modicum of disgust and a little bawdiness into one word. "I'm gonna take a shower," he said, and with that she watched him walk towards the hallway and the bathroom.   
  


  
  
The next night, at LJ's fake birthday dinner, they all laughed together and let LJ dominate the conversation. Sara sipped 7-Up and envied Jane her white wine and her easy smile. Sara also felt like she was at one of her father's political meetings, but as soon as that thought entered her mind she felt terrible for thinking badly of anything related to him after everything that had happened, so she shoved it away and focused on all the things she didn't like about Jane.   
  
The truth was, however, Jane was wonderful. She fit with Lincoln and LJ, and she told them things about Aldo Burrows that neither of them would ever have been able to know without her.   
  
Sara realized halfway through dinner that the only thing she didn't like about Jane was that there was nothing unlikable about her. It was stupid to be jealous, especially when she was the one cheating. Although the moral dilemma Sara faced wasn't so much a clear black and white line to her as it was trying to understand why she wanted Lincoln so much. It wasn't the idea of waiting for Michael that bothered her. A week to sit and think about it during every free moment had cleared that up. It wasn't Michael at all. It was her, and the way she had always been.   
  
Michael didn't know her, even though he thought he did. He couldn't possibly know her, because all he saw was what she had sparsely passed out to him in the Infirmary. He'd tried, on her various visits to Statesville, to get her to talk about her addiction and what had happened the night she overdosed, but she told him she wasn't ready to talk to him about it, yet. She gave him that one word, like maybe someday she would be ready, but in reality she didn't know that she would ever be ready to talk to Michael about any of it.   
  
He was too perfect, just like Lincoln's description of himself equaling a train wreck and Michael equaling a ballet. She was much more of a train wreck herself, and it was that connection that showed her the true nature of her attraction to Lincoln. Michael had gone to jail on purpose, he didn't just suddenly find himself in a situation that he had caused but couldn't even clearly explain. She'd tried to make Michael like herself, comparing his life on the run to her own chasing of a high, but obviously it hadn't been anything of the sort. Michael had brought down a corrupt government body. Michael had said, "I hadn't thought of it like that," and didn't finish his statement with the truth,  _of course it isn't that, Sara. I'm saving my brother, and you, and everyone_. Save Sara, Save the World, indeed.  
  
Michael was an aberration. A very real aberration, because she most definitely felt something for him, and from him for her, but their fit couldn't be more off. She didn't belong with him anymore than he belonged in jail.   
  
Lincoln spoke honestly and shot straight. And she was, in fact, the kind of woman he could sleep with and have no expectations with or for afterwards. She wasn't a jealous woman.   
  
Except she was, when it came to Michael or Lincoln. She wanted them both, and ultimately that meant she could have neither.  
  


  
  
Sara watched quietly from the new sofa in Lincoln and LJ's apartment as Jane hugged LJ goodnight. All evening, she'd noticed the feeling between the three of them, including Lincoln, but excluding her, was that of family. She supposed her feeling excluded was her own doing and not because Jane had any ulterior motives. She genuinely cared for the Burrows men, and it was obvious in everything she did. She heard LJ say softly, "I love you," as he broke their embrace, and she wondered about those few weeks he'd spent with Jane, alone. What had happened to forge the bond they shared?  
  
"I love you, too, kiddo. Happy Birthday," she said, bussing his cheek with a quick kiss. "Call me when you know the date of your first soccer game. I want to come."  
  
"I will," LJ said, smiling.  
  
Sara marveled at the idea of a summer league soccer team, something so normal and ordinary for LJ to be a part of when only a few weeks previously he'd been running for his life. He grumbled about school, but that was as normal as any teenager, she supposed. Lincoln had told her yesterday that he was seeing a therapist, which Sara had recommended in the first place. LJ was a good kid, but he'd seen a lot and nobody should expect him to bounce back without any cracks.  
  
She knew she certainly hadn't.  
  
Lincoln came out of the bedroom, his white shirt half unbuttoned and completely untucked, and he handed Jane a CD. "Thanks for letting me borrow it, you were right, I liked it a lot." They had gone to a nice restaurant, which forced them all to dress up, but the minute they hit the door Lincoln had pulled his tie off and walked back to his bedroom to get the CD for Jane. "Hey, I forgot to ask, did you decide on that job?"  
  
Jane gave him a smile and nodded her head. "I took the fed job. You were right, the pay is better."  
  
"Good. You hear that?" he asked LJ. "She's taking up permanent residence in Chicago."  
  
Smiling again, LJ responded, "Good. Except, what if I ever want to go to California? I don't have anybody out there to visit."  
  
"I'll tell you where to go," she said. Glancing over at Sara on the sofa, Jane lifted a hand. "Nice to see you again, Sara. You guys have a good night."  
  
"Bye, Jane," Sara said, pasting a smile on her face.  
  
LJ left them alone to take a shower, and Sara wished she had left when Jane did. The only reason she didn't was because she was feeling territorial, and she was behaving ridiculously, even if only she was aware of it. Lincoln leaned against the wall leading to the kitchen and asked, "You want something to drink?"  
  
"No, thanks," she said, pulling her legs up underneath her. She was wearing a short black cocktail dress, and he had been looking at her legs all night like he'd never seen legs before. That was another reason she should have had no problem with Jane, but she realized that where Lincoln was concerned her logic didn't work. It was haywired, big time.  
  
"Are you all right? You've seemed…strange all night."  
  
"I'm fine," she said. Then offered a lie for both their sakes, "Just tired. It was a rough day at the clinic."  
  
"You like working there?" he asked.  
  
"It's fine. I mean, it's sad sometimes, it's hard work most of the time, demanding, fast paced. But that's what I like, I'm good at it."  
  
"I'm sure after Fox River, you can do anything." He paused, glancing at the bathroom door, then back at her face. "Thanks for coming tonight, it meant a lot to LJ."  
  
"You two seem to really get on with Jane. Forgive me for bringing this up again, I don't want to argue with you, but why don't you…you know. Hook up with Jane?"  
  
Lincoln blew out a big breath and shook his head. "I know you seem to think that I'm just looking for a place to stick it, and I guess that's true to a certain extent, but there has to be attraction, you know, Sara."  
  
"She's beautiful. How could you not be attracted to her? Besides, when she told that story tonight of how you two met, I gotta say, I couldn't imagine someone who suits you better than a woman you could slam your head into and she stayed on her feet."  
  
"Look, she was my dad's…lover. They weren't married or anything, but she loved him, you know? And she needs us, because he's gone, and she's the only tie we've got to him, so…we just melded. We're like a family now, without any laws or rules telling us we're family. We just have what little Aldo Burrows gave us, and it ain't much, but it's enough."  
  
"You can share with your brother, but not your father. I get it."  
  
That was not the right thing to say and Sara couldn't help but wish to recall the words almost before she even said them, but the sadist in her was in for an ounce, in for a pound. Maybe she was trying to provoke him, she didn't know. She didn't really understand any of her actions in his presence. "I'm not sharing with my brother," he said, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him.  
  
"You're not?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. Now she was definitely provoking him, as much as she could while he stood across the room from her and she sat folded up on the couch.  
  
"You haven't been with Michael yet. And when you are with him, this will be over."  
  
"How do you know I haven't been with Michael?"  
  
"I just do." His eyes glinted at her, hard. He challenged her to correct him with just one look, and when she didn't respond to him, he continued, "You better go. LJ will be out of the shower soon. He might get suspicious if you're still here, you know," he added with sarcasm. His eyes drifted down her legs. "He might guess what I've been thinking about all night."  
  
Sara got to her feet and slipped her dress shoes back on. She knew she didn't really want to see Lincoln mad, she had a feeling that amount of anger, uncontrolled, in him would be the most dangerous thing she could face down, and that included a bathtub and an iron mixed together. "Do you care if LJ knows?" she asked, as she got to the door. He was only a couple yards away from her now.  
  
"Sure I do. He would have an opinion, and not a good one. No one would have a good opinion if they knew about it."  
  
"Ourselves included."  
  
"Yeah, well," Lincoln said, clearing his throat. He dropped her gaze and said softly, "Whatever gets you through the night."  
  
"We're the kind of people who create situations. We're the kind of people who fuck things up, and everyone looking in thinks we did it on purpose." She knew a mirror when she looked into it.  
  
He shrugged. "Maybe we do."  
  
"I don't like being a train wreck either, Lincoln."  
  
A smile flirted with his mouth, but didn't touch his eyes at all. "That's why when the time comes, this will end and it won't be a problem for either of us."  
  
She twisted the doorknob and waited a moment before she responded. "Right."   
  
As she slipped through the opened door, his hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her to a stop. "I don't share with anyone, Sara, for the record."  
  
She looked down at his fingers, at the way their broad tips dug into her upper arm. She knew exactly what he meant; for once they weren't referencing something else with words that implied another lie. "Neither do I," she said, lifting her eyes to his.  
  
Leaning down, he kissed her possessively before giving her a little shove through the door. "Good."  



	5. I Could Lie And Say I Love You, Pour a Little Poison In Your Ear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

Lincoln found himself fighting with LJ on a regular basis about everything from what day of the week they'd go visit Michael to what they would have for dinner. A lot of times, the fights happened right after LJ got home from the therapist he saw twice a week.  
  
Six months after his son started seeing the therapist, LJ invited him to come with him to a session.  
  
Lincoln had thought that meant progress, but it ended up being an hour of LJ reading a list of wrongs he felt Lincoln had committed against him. His job, as the parent of the therapy patient, was to sit there and let LJ say whatever he wanted. He was then expected to ask, What can I do better? when really the question was what had he ever done right? And all he wanted to do was punch a hole through the doctor.  
  
He didn't blame LJ; he blamed himself. He knew he'd been a terrible father by most accounts, but the only thing he had going for him was that he had been there. He had been there more often than not; it wasn't LJ's fault that being there and being Lincoln just wasn't much to offer.  
  
The drive home from the doctor's office had been the most uncomfortable Lincoln could ever remember feeling. What he wanted was to just walk away and not look back. How much easier would it be to let LJ hate him and leave it at that than to try to repair years of damage, things he wasn't all that sure could ever be repaired?  
  
"Dad?" LJ's voice was quiet, but penetrating.  
  
"Yeah?" he asked, glancing over at his son in the passenger seat.  
  
"I don't care about all that stuff I said before, you know that right? I mean, it was just an exercise, it was just what Dr. Wells said I should do to move past those things." Lincoln's eyes were on the road now, but he could hear the tears in LJ's voice and the pain reached out to wrap around his heart even tighter than before. "Dad, I love you, more than anyone, more than anything. And I know you did the best you could."  
  
Lincoln pulled the car over because tears were clouding his own vision, and he didn't need to cause a wreck in downtown Chicago during rush hour. He was silent for several moments as he tried to get control of his emotions, and whatever LJ took that for propelled another confession from his mouth. "Dad, I love you.  _I love you_ , no matter what."  
  
That didn't help Lincoln control his tears any better, so he finally met LJ's gaze and then opened his arms so he could hold his son. They sat there, on the side of the busiest street, and cried together. When the storm finally passed, and Lincoln thought he might be able to speak again, he whispered, "I'm sorry, LJ."  
  
"I'm sorry that I'm such a punk all the time. I really am glad we're together, and I'm trying, really hard to not be so angry about Mom, and Veronica, and all of it. Because I know it wasn't your fault."  
  
Lincoln touched LJ's face softly, his fingers lingering over the small scar on his left cheek. "Knowing something doesn't mean you feel it. I know now that it wasn't my dad's fault that he left, I know he was protecting me, but it doesn't change how it made me feel, how it  _still_  makes me feel, to have grown up without him. If you want to blame me, go ahead."  
  
"It isn't your fault, though. I know that. And I'm starting to feel it. But today, having you come in there and listen to all that crap, that wasn't right. I think maybe that's what Dr. Wells wanted me to figure out. Blaming you doesn't make it better, and it's not true anyway."  
  
"I don't know about that. I think it might be true."  
  
"Well, I know it's not." A little grin touched his lips. "I'm starting to know it anyway."  
  


  
  
When Lincoln got to Sara's late that night, he must have appeared as emotionally drained as he felt, because the concern in her expression deepened the longer she looked at him. "It was a good thing, I mean, by the end, we both felt better, but, fuck," he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. "I feel like shit."  
  
"You don't look much better," she offered, running her fingers over his forehead. He was slumped down on the futon next to her and he smiled half-heartedly when her fingers brushed his lips. "I'm sort of jealous, you know."  
  
"How's that?" he asked, his eyes trained on her face. The delicacy of her doctor's hands skimming over skin never failed to relax him and excite him at the same time.  
  
"I wish I'd had a chance to work things out with my dad. We were just coming to that place, I think, and then he was gone. It's hard, and I can see by just looking at your face just how hard it is, but, baby, don't you think, in the end, it will be worth it?"  
  
"Yes. I do. That's why I went, because I want LJ to love me for more than just because I'm his dad. I want him to love me because I deserve it." His eyes closed, almost involuntarily. "Right now, though, I just want to sleep."  
  
"You came over here, just to sleep?" Sara asked, smiling.  
  
"No, I came over here to see you. But now that I'm here, I just want to sleep."  
  
"What about LJ? Won't he wonder where you are when he gets up in the morning?"  
  
"No, he's at Jane's. They're flying out to California tomorrow to look at colleges. Didn't I tell you he was doing that?"  
  
"No, you didn't. College all the way out there? How do you feel about that?"  
  
"He's just looking. He really just wants to go see all the fake boobs and fake blondes in L.A. I don't think he's serious about school out there. But maybe." He slid his arm around her and pulled her close. "Is it okay if I sleep over? I mean,  _really sleep_  over?"  
  
Her lips touched his softly. "It's fine with me."  
  


  
  
When Lincoln awoke the next morning, it was to lips pressing against his chest while a tongue danced over both his nipples and the distance in between. One thing could be said for Sara, her appetite for sex matched his own and he loved that about her.  
  
He loved a lot of things about her, but he tried not to think about that.  
  
"Have you ever wondered why men have nipples?" he asked, plunging one hand into her hair to cup the back of her head while he dropped the other one down to fondle one of her nipples. "I mean, really, what's the point?"  
  
Sara's tongue darted around one and then her teeth gently closed over it as it pebbled up. "They're fun," she commented, placing a soft kiss in the center of his chest before nibbling her way up to his neck. "If we're going to get technical, there's really no reason for a woman to have an orgasm, you know. A man needs to ejaculate to procreate, but that's not necessary for a woman. Women can get pregnant whether we have a good time in bed or not."  
  
"You already answered that question," he murmured, as her lips came up over his chin. He slid his hands down her back and under her bottom, cupping her firmly against his growing erection. "It's fun. Giving a woman an orgasm…fun, fun, fun."  
  
Their lips met and Sara laughed in her throat. "For some men. Not all men find it fun. They find it to be work, work, work…ahhhhh…" she sighed, losing any more words she might have had when his fingers wiggled between her legs and pulled them apart.  
  
"I don't get that. How could you not consider it fun? I've been to bed with a couple women who thought they couldn't have one. I showed them the way."  
  
Sara laughed again and whimpered when his finger worked its way inside her. "Lincoln…" she gasped and he rolled, flipping her on to her back and pressing his lips over hers at the same moment. In a short amount of time he stroked her to orgasm, kissing her mouth all the while and proving to them both what fun it was.  
  
As she caught her breath, he admired the sweat gleaming on her shoulders and breasts and he grinned down at her. "Having fun?" he asked.  
  
"Time of my life," she breathed, her hand working between them to grasp his cock. "Your turn, don't you think?"  
  
"I'm already having fun. I don't need to come to be satisfied."  
  
Sara raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Okay, that's a lie, but it's the thought that counts."  
  
Some time later, after he'd made sure she came again and he had found his own release, he lay quietly, his head resting against her chest. Her fingers combed through his hair softly and her voice floated to him. "I'm going to see Michael today."  
  
"Oh, yeah? It's been a while, huh? He was complaining last week when LJ and I were there that you've been working too much lately."  
  
She didn't respond right away, and Lincoln felt the familiar guilt eat at his stomach lining. He knew she wasn't working more than normal. He knew her entire schedule, and it just didn't involve going to Statesville as much as it once did. "I'm going to tell him I'm not coming to see him anymore. It's pointless, and we both know it, but we both keep trying to make it be something it's not."  
  
Lincoln jerked into an upright position. "You can't do that!" he exclaimed. "Sara, I know you love him. Don't do this."  
  
"Lincoln, do you really think if I loved Michael, I could be here like this with you? Come on."  
  
"Yeah, I do!" he all but shouted. "I know you love him."  
  
"How do you know that?"  
  
"Because I'm here, and I love him! Sara," he dropped his voice, quieting the violence he felt with a plea. "I know what it's been like, all confusing and hard. And I don't help anything by coming around like I do," his fingers gripped her chin when she opened her mouth to respond. "No, no! I know it's all mixed up in there, but it won't be when he's out. It's only another year. When he's here with you, it won't be hard at all. It will be just like it should have always been. Sara, Sara! I swear. Don't do that. You can't go up there and take away everything that he's holding on to. You know you don't want to." Her eyes met his fiercely and his tightened his fingers against her chin. "Don't."  
  
"Just because you use me as a substitute doesn't mean that's what I'm doing," she said, pushing his hands away from her face and sitting up herself. "I might have been doing that six months ago, but that's not what's going on now."  
  
"What the hell are you talking about? Me using you as a substitute?" he demanded incredulously.  
  
She jerked the bed sheet up to cover her breasts. "For Veronica," she said, her voice tart. "Don't tell me that you aren't using me to ease your own pain."  
  
He scoffed, his lips turning down in the corners. "You're nothing like Veronica. She would never do what you're doing, and don't flatter yourself for one minute that I'm pretending you're her. I know exactly who you are."  
  
Sara's face closed up instantly, the flash of pain in her expression stabbing through him, like a warrior falling on his own sword. "I never thought you pretended I was her. I thought you were trying to fuck her memory away and my body was just as easy and convenient as any other. And if you could console yourself that I was pretending you were Michael, somewhere in there it all made sense to you. I didn't realize until just now that you were screwing me, judging me, _and_ condemning me for betraying the same brother you're betraying."  
  
"Sara, look-"  
  
"Get out, Lincoln. We're done here."  
  
The finality in her voice was like nothing Lincoln had ever heard from her. Something in his chest twinged a little and then a shaft of pain fell through his center. She got out of the bed, dragging the sheet with her. When she got to the bathroom door, she said, "I mean it. Get out. When I come out of the bathroom, you better be gone."  
  
"Sara-"  
  
"I said, GET OUT!" she shouted.  
  
He stood up and put his hands out placatingly. "I didn't mean - just don't, don't end things with Michael because of this. This was just - good ol' trainwreck Linc, remember? Michael's what you want, what you've always wanted."  
  
"How can I ever be with Michael when the person whose opinion he values most in the world thinks I'm a whore?" she asked. Yanking the sheet behind her into the bathroom, she said, "If you're not gone when I come out, I'll call the police."  



	6. The Eagle Wants a Canyon And a Place Where He Can Rest His Wings a While

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

Sara twisted the water on with so much violence, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the handle had broken off between her fingers. Instead the showerhead released the water as powerfully as it could, since it was turned on full blast, and she dropped the sheet and stepped inside the tub.  
  
The water pounded her body while Lincoln’s hateful words pounded her brain. She knew he’d said other things, things to try to stop her from hurting Michael, but all she could hear was the tone of his voice when he told her she was nothing like Veronica. She hadn’t even known Veronica, and she had no comparison to make, but the disgust in his voice stripped away all her pretenses. A sob bubbled up in her throat and pushed its way out of her mouth until she realized she was crying so hard she was retching into the base of her bathtub while the water flowed over her head.  
  
Jerking herself back, she stopped drowning herself, remembering Lance’s hand against the back of her neck pushing her underwater. She didn’t know she could now have the sensation of dying without even being close to death. She didn’t know why or how she had let Lincoln matter to her so much, but it felt as though she was being held underwater by his words.  
  
God, she was such a fool. She’d known from the beginning, from that moment in New Mexico when she couldn’t be in the same house with him anymore unless there was no space between them, it was the worst idea she’d ever had, and she’d had quite a few bad ideas in her lifetime. It was wrong for so many reasons, and the biggest one had just slapped her face like a Mack truck. No matter who she did bad things with, they were still bad, and everyone knew it. She could not escape the truth, no matter how much she wanted to.  
  


  
  
“What’s wrong?” Michael asked. His voice was calm and soothing, but the jagged edges of the words made her bleed internally anyway. She’d tried to put on enough make up to cover up the devastation on her face, but she should have realized he would see right through it.  
  
They sat at a round table in the middle of the visitor’s area. He was allowed physical contact with his visitors, but it was only their hands that could touch. He always reached for her fingers and wrapped his around them as soon as he was close enough and held her hands in his the entire 30 minutes they were allotted. “I’m just sorry I haven’t come to see you more often,” she said, forcing her lips into a smile, but when she felt them tremble she knew there was nothing left to do but tell the truth.  
  
“Sara, what is it?”  
  
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Michael…” she whispered his name and his fingers clenched around hers. “I’ve been seeing someone,” she said, her voice low. His head dipped towards hers, and he glanced around as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping on their conversation. When his eyes met hers again, he didn’t say anything, he just inclined his head to encourage her to continue. “For a while now,” she said. “I didn’t know how to tell you.” Tears filled her eyes and trickled over her cheeks.  
  
“You think I couldn’t guess? You used to come every day. Then it was a few times a week, then once a week if I was lucky. I’m not stupid.”  
  
She pulled her hands away from his to wipe at her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.  
  
“Why are you telling me now?” he asked.  
  
“B-because,” she began, but she dissolved into more tears and wanted to tear her hair out. She did not come here so Michael could make her feel better about sleeping with his brother. She didn’t. That’s not why she came. She came to tell him she wasn’t coming anymore. But she couldn’t say anything else, and Michael leaned back slightly to drag a handkerchief out of his pocket.  
  
It was blue prison issue as well, but what were the odds he’d have one on him?  _Too perfect_ , her mind hissed. “He hurt you, didn’t he?” he asked quietly when she was unable to formulate words.  
  
She shook her head and pressed her fingers against her lips until she shoved the emotion down. She could cry about this later, on her own time. She owed Michael the truth. “It was nothing I didn’t deserve. I should have told you the truth, Michael. I’m sorry. I just wanted to be honest with you, at least once.”  
  
“You’re not planning on coming back?” He carefully put his hand back out, wrapping his fingers around her wrist lightly.  
  
“Why would you want me to?” she asked, dabbing at her eyes.  
  
“Because you’re Sara, and I’m tied to you. We didn’t go through what we did, and survive to just fade out of each other’s lives.” He studied his long fingers around her wrist for a few silent moments before looking back at her. “I won’t lie and say that I just want to be friends. I don’t. I know I could make you happy, Sara. I sure as hell wouldn’t make you look like this. But it will be awhile before I can make good on a promise like that. If you keep coming here, if you keep seeing me, then maybe in a year I can finally make it up to you, all the stuff we had to go through. I can never change the past, but I can make the future bright. If you give me a chance.”  
  
She looked away from the intensity in his gaze. She looked away from the longing she saw in his face. He wanted her, and right now, she wanted him, but was that only to get back at Lincoln, or because she knew it was over between them? It had been confusing before; now it was beyond confusing. Really, if she wanted to piss Lincoln off, what she would do is walk away from Michael and never look back. Lincoln wanted her here with his brother not because it was what Michael deserved, but because it was what Michael wanted.  
  
They were all so fucked up Sara wanted to laugh maniacally. She felt Michael link their fingers together again and she looked back at him. “I can’t promise you anything,” she said.  
  
“Then don’t,” he responded. “Just come back.”  
  


  
  
Sara went home and slept for three days. She called in sick to work, recognized it for the depression it was, but congratulated herself that she hadn’t tried to shoot up at the first sign of heartache. She did attend a NA meeting when she finally emerged from her bed on the third day, and then she went back to work.  
  
There was no point to dwelling on it; she was through with Lincoln, and she was pretty sure he was through with her. If she could see herself with Michael in a year, that would be a bridge to cross only then, and until then she could go visit a man who had turned out to be a decent friend when she wasn’t even expecting it.  
  
When Jane showed up at the clinic just as she was getting ready to leave a week later, she could have swallowed her own tongue. “Could we get a drink or something?” Jane asked.  
  
“I don’t drink,” Sara said lamely.  
  
“I can drink water if it bothers you,” she said, a small smile touching her mouth.  
  
“All right,” she said, grabbing her coat.  
  
Following Jane to her car, Sara silently agreed to letting Jane drive them just a few blocks before Jane said, “How about Starbucks?”  
  
“Works for me,” Sara said.  
  
When they had settled at a small table in the corner with their mocha lattes, Sara studied Jane. Her pale blonde hair was natural, and her skin was luminescent. She was without a doubt one of the loveliest women Sara had ever seen in person up close and she still couldn’t understand why Lincoln didn’t want her. They fit together, dark and light, tough and resilient. She didn’t know why she couldn’t quit shoving them together in her mind. It was the masochist in her, she was sure, because despite being furious with Lincoln, she knew she wouldn’t be okay with him being with someone else. Especially after he had made it clear she had been the only woman in his life for the entire six months that they had played their sexual buddy game.  
  
“Are you all right?” Jane asked.  
  
Startled, Sara asked, “What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, I saw Lincoln, and he looked like death warmed over, so are you all right?”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“I never took you for a coy one, Sara. I know all about it. I have for a long time.”  
  
“You know all about what?” Sara demanded, her fingers tightening against the hot cup in her hand.  
  
“Lincoln doesn’t have a poker face with me. We may be the same age, but I should be his mother. I knew the night of LJ’s birthday dinner something was going on. When we got back from LA last week, he was drunk, and had been for a few days from what I could tell. You know he’s still not working, so it’s not good to upset a man with that much time on his hands,” she said, a slight smile on her face.  
  
“ _I_  upset  _him_? Give me a break. And what exactly do you think you know all about, anyway?”  
  
“I know that you two thought you could do whatever you were doing with no consequences. Now there are consequences. He’s useless and you’re bitchy, something I would never have expected from you.”  
  
“I wonder if Lincoln’s mother would have taken it upon herself to come down and lecture me. Somehow, I think she wouldn’t have been involved if she were still alive. Mind your own business.”  
  
Jane leaned forward and the look on her face scared Sara a little. “They are my business, Sara. They are all I have in the world and I’ll do whatever I have to to protect them. That includes Michael.”  
  
“Why am I the bad guy? Or girl, as it were? Lincoln is just as involved in this clandestine affair we were having. But I assure you, it’s over, so you can go protect them however the hell you want. It doesn’t concern me anymore.” She stood up and slung her purse over her shoulder.  
  
“I know you saw Michael last week. Did you tell him the truth?”  
  
“That I was fucking his brother and now I’m not? No, I figured there was no reason to ruin his and Lincoln’s relationship. He knows I’ve been seeing someone, not that that’s any of your business.”  
  
Sara grabbed her coffee and made to move around Jane. “I’ll drive you back to your car,” Jane said.  
  
“No thanks,” Sara said sarcastically.  
  
She wasn’t surprised when Jane followed her outside. “Sara, wait.”  
  
“No, I don’t think so,” she muttered and kept going.  
  
“Lincoln feels terrible, Sara. I mean, please stop!” She ran after Sara and grabbed at her arm. “I’m not trying to tell you to keep on with this, it’s obviously a horrible idea, and you both…” Jane shook her head. “Look, I’m not the morality police, but misery is misery and I can see it in both of you. And maybe you thought you could get rid of it together, or you weren’t thinking at all, I don’t know, all I know is he’s…he’s lost so much in the last several years. I think this might be the thing he can’t take, whatever it is between you two. It’s one thing to lose someone to death, you can’t do anything about that, but to know you’re still living, just on the other side of town, and to have no contact…after having seen you all the time. Even if your relationship has to change, maybe you could just consider not severing all ties. Just consider it,” she added hastily when Sara didn’t say anything.  
  
Holding on to her emotions by tenterhooks, Sara asked, “Has he been to a meeting since he got drunk?”  
  
“Yes,” Jane said. “And he hasn’t slipped since, but it’s only been a week, and he was really, really sick afterwards. He hadn’t done that in such a long time, I was afraid he’d given himself alcohol poisoning, but he seems to be all right now.” Jane let go of Sara’s arm Sara supposed because she had quit trying to get away. “He won’t go see Michael though, he’s too ashamed about it. Which is ridiculous if you ask me, he could go up there when he was just—“ As though she suddenly realized who she was talking to, Jane stopped herself. “I don’t know what to do.”  
  
“Tell him to talk to LJ’s therapist. That’s what he needs.”  
  
Jane snorted. “You’re probably right about that, but he’ll never do it. Stubborn ass.”  
  
Sara wrapped both hands around her coffee cup and looked seriously at Jane. “Just be there for him. Sometimes he made me feel like I was the only one he could turn to, but I think I was the only one he wanted to turn to. He needs you, Jane, he needs someone who loves him.”  
  
Jane’s hand rubbed against Sara’s arm, the same one she had clutched painfully a few moments earlier. “What he needs and what he wants are two different things,” she said softly. “And I may be one, but you are the other, regardless of right or wrong, or logic, or him saying something unforgivable to you.”  
  
Sara bit her lip. “He told you everything?”  
  
“It sort of poured out of him, like the liquor had poured into him. He’s a mess, that’s for sure. I did want to see how you were doing, but I figured of the two of you, you were doing better. Just,” Jane pressed Sara’s arm again with a gentle hand. “Just consider it. Please.”  



	7. The Drifter Wants a Freight Train That Will Carry Him Another Hundred Miles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

When Lincoln left Sara’s apartment, he could still hear her sobs bouncing through his ear canals like popcorn kernels. He hadn’t known he had the capacity to hurt her, and discovering it the way he had was a complete accident. What had spewed out of his mouth wasn’t how he felt.   
  
Was it?   
  
He was just striking back at her for even bringing Veronica up. He’d been avoiding his guilt at every turn, the escape and evade tactics displaying themselves in projects around his apartment (like 1000-piece puzzles and the dining room table he was sanding down and refinishing) and fucking Sara every chance he got, but he’d never equated anything about Sara with Veronica, either in a scales-balanced way or in a one-better-than-the-other way.   
  
Apples and oranges.   
  
Vee and Sara.   
  
Unlike Lincoln and Michael. One was better than the other in that equation, but no one needed to tell anyone that. One brother broke into prison to help the other escape. The fact that there was even such a sentence to describe his brother’s actions sounded so ridiculous that it proved the point.   
  
It was 8:43am when Lincoln stopped at the liquor store five blocks from his apartment and bought three bottles of Tequila. By 9:30 he was feeling no pain and he really had no recollection of anything over the next two days except puking his guts up until Jane and LJ arrived back from Los Angeles. When he saw LJ’s face, it reminded him of too many other times when disappointment held no words, just a shifting of eyes and the slump of his son’s shoulders.   
  
Jane had sent LJ to her house for the night, despite his very vocal protests. Lincoln didn’t know what she’d said, but she had some kind of power over LJ. He had gone, albeit sullenly.   
  
Sitting in the middle of the bathroom floor with Lincoln while he was sick and then holding his head in her lap when he couldn’t throw up anymore, Jane proved her love so profoundly that if Lincoln hadn’t been so weak he would have thought to do more than just spill his guts to her. She’d stroked her hands through his hair and patted his face with a cool washrag and listened while he confessed everything. It wasn’t that it was news to her so much as it was surprising that he felt as much guilt as he did considering how long he had let the situation go on.   
  
And the truth was he would have let it go on, and on, and on, if he hadn’t been stupid enough to say something to Sara that broke her heart and proved what an ass he was. He was chasing her into Michael’s arms; and maybe subconsciously that had been his plan all along. Or maybe he was just that stupid.   
  


  
  
“You mean to tell me that this isn’t about Veronica?” Jane demanded when he was back on his feet. LJ was at school, and Jane had taken it upon herself to come over every day and make sure Lincoln was up and moving.   
  
Lincoln shrugged and avoided her eyes. “It isn’t anymore about Vee than it’s not about her.”   
  
“Lincoln, what the hell does that mean?” she snapped.   
  
He threw his hands up and turned away from her, pacing over towards the coffee maker. “I feel awful about Veronica, of course. Is that what you need me to say? She died for no good reason, far as I can tell, and I loved her and blah, blah, blah. But Sara–I didn’t sleep with her because I was missing Veronica.”   
  
“Why  _did_  you sleep with her, since we’re on the topic?”   
  
He paused, his hands busy stuffing a coffee filter into the top of the appliance. “She needed me. She wanted me. I hadn’t really been in the market for that, you know, what with prison and all.”   
  
“But you knew your brother was in love with her? I’m not sure I follow that logic. You don’t strike me as the type who would purposely hurt someone.”   
  
He turned around to face her. “I’ve never done anything purposely in my life, Jane, yet I still manage to fuck everything up. Did you see LJ’s face when you walked in and he saw me all strung out? That would be the expression I’ve seen my whole life. First on Michael’s face, then on Vee’s face, then Lisa, then LJ, now Sara. Please note: half of those people are dead because of me.”   
  
“Because of conspiracy that  _involved_  you, not  _because_  of you. And only two of them are dead, and it wasn’t your fault. And my point was you love Michael, you knew Michael had a thing for Sara, and I do believe you believed it was reciprocated, and you slept with her. Can you explain why?”   
  
“I just did explain it.”   
  
“That might be a quasi-acceptable answer for why it happened the first time. The second, third and beyond that, however needs a better excuse.”   
  
“Like any excuse is going to really excuse me. It won’t, and I can’t, so why bother?”   
  
“Perhaps to understand your own motivations?” Jane paused, long enough to draw Lincoln’s eyes back to her once he finished filling the coffee maker with water. “Or do you not want to know why you betrayed your brother, for six months straight, then said the nastiest thing you could to Sara, and then drank like you were trying to kill yourself? Didn’t all that time on death row penetrate your cranium somewhere?”   
  
“You’d think so, huh?” he said, planting his hands on the counter and looking across the island at her. She sat on one of the bar stools he had reupholstered during his project frenzy with her arms crossed over her chest. She was judging him, yet he didn’t feel any defensiveness. Jane had a way about her that no matter what you still knew you were loved, even if she was calling you a shithead to your face. Which she had called him, during their hours in the bathroom together. “I’ve always been an impulse person. That’s not an excuse, and I’m not trying to give a excuse.”   
  
“Lincoln. Your own drunken words to me were, and I quote, ‘I ripped her heart out. I don’t know why I said that, but all I wanted to do was forget I’d said it. So that’s when I bought the Tequila.’ Doesn’t that strike you as something more than...? Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’m not going to spell it out for you. If you can’t see it, maybe you are as stupid as you think you are.”   
  
“What?” he shouted. “What do you think? Just say it!”   
  
Frustration spilled out of Jane, Lincoln could almost see it free falling around her. She jumped off the bar stool and pointed at him. “You’re in love with her, dipshit! You want this to be about Michael, you keep trying to tell yourself you feel bad, guilty, whatever because of what you’ve done behind Michael’s back, but what drove you to drinking, Lincoln? Her throwing you out!”   
  
Lincoln was stunned. He almost had no words at all for her, but he spit out, “I am not!” automatically.   
  
Jane did a “Uh-huh,” under her breath.   
  
“I’m not. Oh my God, Jane. We’re not teenagers who don’t know the difference between lust and love.”   
  
“Maybe I am, but you’re not. And it may have started out as lust, Lincoln, but six months later? What do you call it?”   
  
“Great lust! We’re good in bed together. We fit. We get off on each other. We scratch an itch.”   
  
“Is that all you ever do together? Have sex?”   
  
“Of course not.”   
  
“What else do you do?”   
  
Lincoln could feel his eyes widening in outrage. “None of your business. I’m not in love with her.”   
  
“Do you just sit around watching TV? Do you talk until all hours of the night? Do you sleep together, I mean really sleep? You’ve kept her separate from your life with LJ, but you haven’t kept her separate from  _your_  life. You’ve talked to her about what’s happened, haven’t you? You told her about Veronica. That’s why she thought she was a substitute.”   
  
“Of course we talk! What has that got to do with anything? We’re friends, so what? We’ve been through hell together. We both love Michael, we both can’t be with him right now, so we were using each other in a weird way.”   
  
Jane walked into the kitchen and looked at the percolating coffee pot. She seemed to be weighing her next words, but Lincoln knew she couldn’t say anything else that was more wrong, or more ridiculous. “Take Michael out of the equation, Lincoln. Just for argument’s sake. There is no Michael. There is just Lincoln and Sara. How would you proceed from this point, if that were the case? You just fucked up, big time, pissed her off, perhaps caused her to never want to see you again. What would you do if this wasn’t something that should have never been in the first place?”   
  
“Nothing,” he answered quickly. “Easy come, easy go.”   
  
Jane didn’t look at him; she continued to watch the coffee maker. “Tell the truth.”   
  
“She could be anyone. I can find someone else.”   
  
“So anyone could cause you to chuck three and half years sobriety?”   
  
“Forced sobriety.”   
  
“You got drunk because...”   
  
“I was an ass. I hurt her needlessly. I just do shit like that. I don’t need a reason.”   
  
“Do you believe anything you just said?” Jane said, finally looking over her shoulder at him.   
  
He couldn’t return her direct gaze. He studied the counter top intently. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”   
  
“You’re totally fucked, whatever way you look at it,” she finally said.   
  
“Thank you, Jane,” he muttered with thinly veiled sarcasm.   
  
“Keep lying to yourself, why should I care?”   
  
“Yeah, why should you?”   
  
“The last thing Aldo said to me, before you drove in one direction and LJ and I went the other? ‘This is my only chance to set any of it right, Jane. If something happens...finish what I started here today. Promise.’”   
  
Lincoln looked up at her. “You sure remember what people say to you, don’t you?” He felt tears stinging his eyes, which was normal when she mentioned anything about his father. “It’s not your responsibility to straighten me out, Jane. And besides, it’s hopeless.”   
  
“It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it?”   
  
Lincoln had meant his life was hopeless, but he knew Jane meant his relationship with Sara. “She belongs with Michael; whatever I might feel doesn’t matter.” He gave her just enough, she could think whatever she wanted to about that ambiguous statement.   
  
“Who decided that?” Jane asked, moving towards him.  
  
Lincoln looked down into her pale blue eyes and explained himself in one short sentence. “Me, the night she climbed into bed with me.”   
  


  
  
A knock at the door brought Lincoln out of his stupor. Thinking about everything Jane had said to him the preceding week had become a habit. He now wondered if he knew anything about himself, or if the only person who knew what the hell was going on was a woman who had complete control of his son, and that control seemed based solely on LJ’s affection for her. And she also happened to only be in their lives for precisely eight and a half months. Two months on the run, six months back in regular life, and then the last two weeks playing psychoanalyst/sponsor/big sister to him. He wondered if she reported back to Michael daily, but he had not yet gone to see his brother.   
  
Telling Michael that he’d ‘fallen off the wagon,’ a phrase he loathed, by the way, was not something he wanted to do, especially when the reason, or at least the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back...   
  
Was standing facing him. “Sara?” he asked in disbelief as he stood looking at her through the opened door.   
  
“Hi,” she said. She had a backpack strapped to her back, plus she had three large textbooks in her arms.   
  
“Hi,” Lincoln repeated lamely, because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to think about first: why she had school books in her arms, why she was there, or how it was possible to think she looked so beautiful when her hair was twisted into a haphazard ponytail that skimmed the top of her head and she looked a little flushed, he guessed from the weight of the backpack and the journey up two flights of stairs.   
  
“Are you going to invite me in?” she asked when he made no movement.   
  
“Uh–what are you doing here?” he asked in confusion.   
  
She shook her head and came forward, crowding past him by turning her large textbooks into his chest and knocking him sideways. “I’ve got an idea.”   
  
He watched her walk over to his coffee table and dump the books down on to it. The she dipped her shoulder to let the backpack slide down on the sofa. He was dumbfounded and he had no words. This was a situation he never thought he’d see himself in again. He’d already decided that if he ever saw her again it would be because Michael brought her around and that was a year away, plenty of time for him to get over...whatever. Not being in love with her. Because he wasn’t. He wasn’t thrilled to see her now either.   
  
Or was he?   
  
“Don’t you want to know what my idea is?” she asked, walking back over to him to shut the front door. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and pulled him towards the sofa. “Lincoln?”   
  
“Sure,” he finally uttered, his eyes drawn to the books. The top one said  _Elementary Algebra_  on its cover.   
  
“I’m going to help you study for the GED. And then you’re going to go to college.”   
  
“What?” he asked, both in disbelief and in total befuddlement.   
  
“You can’t get a job, right? And you’ve got more money than you’ll ever be able to spend? And we need structure. We can do this, together, and then everything will be better for you. Michael will get out of jail and we’ll do just what we’ve planned this whole time.”   
  
“Sara, I don’t think we–“   
  
“No touching, for us. We are just study partners. We’ll have rules, just like in The Program.”   
  
Lincoln flinched when she said that. “The Program?” he repeated. “How did you find out?”   
  
“Jane came to see me.”   
  
He blew out a breath, and a few choice swear words. “I’m gonna wring her neck,” he muttered, rubbing his hand against the back of his own in contemplation.   
  
“Lincoln, we both made stupid choices. We both got ourselves into a no-win situation. Let me do this. Let me make it right.” Sara’s eyes met his pleadingly.   
  
“Sara, we can’t undo what we did.”   
  
“I know that. But we can  _not_  do it again. We can be what we should have always been. Friends.”   
  
He wanted to say and do so many things right then.  _I’m sorry_ , and  _I didn’t mean it_ , were the two things that edged up to the tip of his tongue, but to say them would prove that friends was what they weren’t and possibly could never be. He wanted to tell her she was crazy, and he couldn’t go to college, and this was a bad idea. He wanted to reach out and pull the ponytail down from the top of her head and run his hands through her hair until she moaned softly because it wasn’t enough contact. He wanted to look into her eyes and not hear Jane’s voice in his head telling him just what he felt to a strong choruses of ‘Nuh-uh’s’ reverberating off his eardrums. But when he started nodding and said, “Okay,” Sara’s face lit up and her eyes flashed and she reached down to start explaining the first textbook and he felt something sweet and good pierce his heart, like he was somehow almost forgiven.  



	8. The River Wants an Ocean To Run Towards and Pour Its Heart Into

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

"Dad, you did it, right here." LJ pointed to a piece of notebook paper next to the one Lincoln was looking at in frustration. "It's the exact same formula. You have to do the same thing to each side of the equation."   
  
Sara watched with building amusement as LJ attempted to be patient and Lincoln attempted to be told what to do. It wasn't easy for either of them. "Okay," Lincoln said with a heavy breath. "I'll try one more time, but if I can't get the answer I'm taking a break. I don't care."   
  
LJ eyes flew up to Sara's. She nodded her head and then turned around to walk back into the kitchen. It had become a habit over the last month that Saturday nights were devoted to Lincoln's studies. He worked on some portion of it every day on his own, either Biology, U.S. History, Trigonometry, English or U.S. Government, but on Saturday nights Sara and LJ quizzed him on the different subjects and then he took the online tests that were supposed to give you an idea of what to expect at the actual General Education Diploma testing center.   
  
Tonight they'd spent two hours on math, which was not Lincoln's strong suit. It never ceased to amaze Sara that Michael could be an engineer, could so obviously have an easy time with anything math related, and the person in the world whose DNA most closely matched his own had total affinity for language and history over math and science.   
  
Sara had been surprised by that outcome more especially because Lincoln tended to be very lazy in his speech, but the truth was he could construct a sentence better than she could and he could read something just once and comprehend the details most often questioned in the testing sessions. Beyond that, he loved history and remembered dates better than anyone she'd ever met, which didn't really matter, but helped him keep the chronology rolling in his own head. His essays on various subjects were well written and comprehensive, and she knew he would have no problem with those aspects of the test.   
  
"Sara?" LJ asked, following her into the kitchen a few minutes later.   
  
"Yeah?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at him.   
  
"He finally got it. But how long till the stir-fry is done? I think I should tell him he gets a break before his head explodes."   
  
Sara laughed softly and nodded her agreement. "Give me ten minutes. It's almost done."   
  
"Good," LJ said, a smile lighting up his face. "You know what all this has taught me?"   
  
"What's that?"   
  
"I definitely know I don't want to be a teacher, ever. What a pain in the ass."   
  
"When your dad gets accepted to college, I bet you change your mind."   
  
He paused a minute, examining her face. "Nah, I don't think so."   
  
"Go make sure he's still on task," she said, shooing him away.   
  
As Sara stirred the last of the vegetables into the Wok, she considered how soon Lincoln could take the real GED. She had thought initially it might take him until the beginning of summer to be fully prepared, right around the time LJ would be graduating from high school himself, but she now knew it wouldn't take that long. Other than the math, Lincoln was well prepared, and had thrown himself into the studying. She supposed that was in part because he had nothing else to do, but she also could see the pride that was building in him as he came to realize he could do it.   
  
The first night when she'd sat down with him and explained the subjects he needed to familiarize himself with, he had looked at her like she was crazy. She told him that he'd be surprised to find some of it would come back, even though it had been over 20 years since he'd been in school. "It's all still in there," she'd said, knocking on his forehead like it was a door. "You just have to retrieve it. You said you dropped out halfway through the 10th grade? Then you already had bio and history. The math and the government we'll need to bring you up to scale on…"   
  
"We?" he'd asked.   
  
"Me and LJ. Who better than someone who's in school right now to help you?"   
  
She scraped the contents of the Wok into a serving dish and smiled to herself. For all the things you could lay at her door, the idea that Lincoln was going to achieve something he never thought he could, because of her, well, that was something she would willingly take the blame for.   
  
Michael's apparent gratitude when she told him was the rapid blinking of his eyes. He'd never expected it either, and he didn't know what motivated it, and she hoped he would never know, but his gratitude was more than she could willingly accept, so she brushed it off in front of him and cuddled it to her chest when she was alone.   
  
When she left their lives, she wouldn't leave a wake of destruction. She would leave something good, something more valuable and longer lasting than anything else she could ever give them. They might not understand that for a long time, but at least she understood it.   
  
When LJ and Lincoln came to the table a few moments later, she smiled warmly at them. The love she felt for both of them welled up in her heart and LJ, who had taken to praying since he'd ended his therapy sessions, asked her to bless their food. She cleared her throat and offered a prayer for the family she would never belong to.   
  


  
  
Her ringing phone caused panic to shake her awake. Staring at the red numbers on her alarm clock, she knew whatever was on the other end of the phone couldn't be good. It was 2:30am. "Hello?" she asked anxiously.   
  
"Did Stonewall Jackson die in a battle, or was it friendly fire?"   
  
"Lincoln?" she asked sleepily. "What's wrong?"   
  
"Nothing, I can't remember and it's driving me crazy. Did he die in a battle? Or not? Do you remember?"   
  
"Of course, I don't remember," she snapped in irritation. "And at 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm unlikely to remember. And you've got the history book at your house. Go look it up."   
  
"It's in the living room. I didn't want to go get it."   
  
"You'd rather wake me up, scare me half to death, too, by the way, instead of getting your ass out of bed and going to get the book in your living room?" She knew she sounded like an old woman, but her irritation at being woken up was very real.   
  
"If you knew the answer, it would have seemed like the right choice to make."   
  
"If you had a question about biology, I'd be your woman, but nobody remembers history like you. I can't help you. And I'm half asleep, so goodnight."   
  
"Did I really scare you?" he asked, his voice quieter.   
  
"What do you think, the phone rings in the middle of the night? Everyone freaks out at that."   
  
"Did you think it was about Michael?"   
  
"What? No. Lincoln, I'm hanging up. I'll see you tomorrow, anyway, you know. Crazy."   
  
"I'm sorry," he said. His voice held a rough edge, and she got the feeling he wasn't talking about calling her in the middle of the night.   
  
"Who're you talking to?" Sara heard Jane's sleepy voice, and it sounded as though it was coming from right next to Lincoln. Sara's heart skipped a beat, and then plummeted. He'd already...well of course he had. He was doing what he should have done from the beginning. "It's Sara," he said softly, then to Sara, "Sorry I woke you up."   
  
"Yeah, no problem. Good night, Lincoln." She hung up before he could say anything else. Then she got up and went into the bathroom right off her bedroom and threw up in the toilet.  
  


  
  
The next day, Sara attended a NA meeting. She hadn't been to one for a month, and she knew she should go more often. Her resolve wasn't weakening, but her current situation wasn't really strengthening it either. She had never been a wishy-washy person. She always gone full steam ahead on any project she embarked on, school, work, relationships. She'd always been monogamous too, so it was rather perplexing to have feelings for two people at the same time, much less act on those feelings. She'd chalked it up to the extenuating circumstances, but she definitely compared Lincoln to morphine for a reason.  
  
She was off the "stuff," but that by no means made her want it any less-even though he'd been an ass to her, and apparently had already moved on to greener pastures. Her NA meetings were covering for the lack of a place to go to talk about her feelings for Lincoln, though it was her own fault she still craved him as she did. She spent too much time with him, even though it was only once a week. The once a week meetings had initially been a few hours, but now they had morphed into her rolling into their apartment around noon and staying until bedtime, or well past it. She loved being with Lincoln and LJ more than just about anything in the world, and the first night she'd realized she was using them as a pseudo family, she'd gone home and cried, grief for a life she'd never had, and would never have now that her father was dead, overwhelming her.  
  
What was worse was realizing she would trade all the lovemaking in the world with Lincoln for just the cozy feeling of sitting on the sofa with him and LJ while they watched reruns of Friends. At the back of her mind, a little voice chimed in that she could have that with Michael, and who better than him to have it with anyway? He had to be about as desperate as she was for a family after what he'd done for Lincoln. Of course, her dilemma always came down to that. Michael loved Lincoln, and Michael might love her, but could he ever forgive her for Lincoln? For all of Lincoln? For what still went on in her mind about Lincoln?  
  
Would it ever stop for Lincoln?  
  
Sometimes she doubted it. Truthfully, she  _always_  doubted it.  
  


  
  
The fingers wrapped around hers tightened almost painfully. "Lincoln came to see me," Michael said.  
  
"He did?" Sara asked, surprised. He hadn't told her he was going to do it, not that he would. He probably told Jane all about it. While they were in bed together, no doubt.  
  
"He told me about the GED stuff, and I pretended like you hadn't told me." A little smile curved his mouth and then he laughed softly.  
  
"What?" Sara asked. "It wasn't a secret, or anything."  
  
"I know, I just didn't want him to think it had been my idea or anything. He can be stubborn, and if he got it into his head-"  
  
"I know," Sara said. "Believe me, I know."  
  
Michael's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. "I suppose you do now, spending as much time with him as you have been. He's just so excited; his mind is firing on eight cylinders, Sara. It's all because of you, you know."  
  
Sara shook her head and looked around the visitor's area like an escape route might suddenly appear. "He's doing all the work. Really, him and LJ. LJ's quite a good teacher. He gets frustrated with Lincoln, but it never shows up in his voice. He says he's never done anything so hard, but I bet he decides to go into teaching when he gets to college."  
  
"Linc said LJ really liked the University of California at Irvine, which is near where Jane grew up I guess. He's decided to apply there."  
  
"I know, Lincoln's not really happy about it. He only let him go to California with Jane because he thought it was a whim. I tried to get him to wrap his mind around the idea that LJ might actually want to go out there, but he was so sure that wouldn't happen."  
  
Michael let her hand go so his fingers could caress the palm of her hand. He looked down at her hand and Sara watched as a dozen questions floated across his face. She should never offer information she knew about Lincoln, she should just let Michael do all the talking, but it was a sickness. She knew him, too. And she wanted to talk about him, because she knew him. "Linc also told me about the drinking binge he went on."  
  
Now, Sara was speechless. Or rather all the thoughts that filled her head and threatened to spill out of her mouth were lies surrounded by the truth and she couldn't let any of them go for fear that the wrong ones would smack Michael's face. She just stared at him as he continued to draw his fingers across her skin. "Will you watch out for him, that way? Maybe you could take him with you to a meeting. Maybe you could even trick him into going."  
  
"Oh, Michael, I don't think-" and she wanted to say she didn't think that was a good idea, but he was bound to ask why. So then she was going to say she didn't think Lincoln needed it, but that was a lie, because if anything, with the new pressure he was putting on himself by studying, he could easily get over-confident and have a misstep. And so she didn't say anything to finish her sentence.  
  
"He'll be mad at first, but then he'll realize you did it for his own good, and he'll love you for it. That's the way he is." Michael's expression changed to concern as Sara felt tears fill up and overflow the edges of her eyelids. "Hey," he said softly. "What's the matter? I knew you didn't look right. Sara, what is it?"  
  
She shook her head and then he dragged her against him, holding her tightly to his chest. Her cheek fit right into his shoulder and she thought she might just let go and sob endlessly. "Hey, Scofield! No full body contact! You know the rules. Scofield!" The guard yelled Michael's name louder the second time and started to move towards them, so Sara pulled away quickly.  
  
"I'm fine," she said, wrapping her hands around his in the dominant position for once. "I'm fine. I'm just always amazed at yours and Lincoln's bond. You-" Dipping her head, she wiped her cheek on her shoulder and sniffed hastily. "You just show me how family should be. It's wonderful to see. They're happy tears, Michael. Happy tears."  
  
His eyes searched her face at length and then he said, his voice low, "You can be a part of that, if you want, Sara."  
  


  
  
Late that evening, as she lay on her back on Lincoln's couch, she listened to Michael's brother and nephew as they discussed where to put the cat's litter box. LJ had been pushing for a cat for a while, but they lived on a busy street, so Lincoln had contended the cat would have to be an indoor pet. Right now, the cat, (who was longhaired and black as night, and had been rescued from the Humane Society) lay against Sara's chest, waiting to be shown where her potty box would be.  
  
A moment later LJ appeared, standing over Sara, and scooped the cat up into his arms. "You know, I wanted a dog, right?" he said, trying to prove to her that he wasn't a big softie over a silly cat. But when the cat purred and rubbed her head against his neck, it was hard for Sara to control her smile and LJ's head naturally turned into the caress from the cat.  
  
"Of course, a dog. But in an apartment, that's tough."  
  
"Exactly," he said, leaving to take the cat to the laundry room, where her box would be kept.  
  
A few moments later, Lincoln sat down on the sofa beside Sara, carefully pushing her hair out of the way so he didn't sit on it. "That crazy kid," he muttered, a smile on his face.  
  
"He really wanted a dog, you know," she said mockingly.  
  
"It could be a fuckin' gerbil, he'd still be in the stratosphere. He always wanted a pet when he was a kid, but I never let him have one." Lincoln scooted down on the couch to prop his legs up on the coffee table.   
  
Sara tipped her head back to watch him as his head got closer to hers. "Why didn't you let him have one before?" she asked.  
  
"Too selfish. I knew it would take work, and he only lived with me half the time then, you know?"  
  
"Now, you think, _ah-ha_ , a cat will keep LJ from moving to California."  
  
Lincoln's head jerked and he glanced down at her. Then one of his hands scooped up all her hair and dumped it on her face. "Shut up."  
  
She sputtered and fought to clear her vision, reaching to pull his arm away as his hand tried to gather up her hair again. They struggled back and forth for a moment and then Lincoln, at an obvious advantage, since she was prone on the sofa, grabbed both her arms in both his hands, pinning them next to her head. Moving quickly, he got on his knees on the couch and used them to immobilize her head. Once he had her crying, "I take it back, I take it back!" she felt his thighs relax around her ears, but he didn't move away from her.  
  
She stopped laughing and looked up at him to see why he was no longer trying to coerce her, but not letting her go either. Their eyes met, and something hot and wonderful curled through Sara. "Do you wear perfume?" he asked.  
  
Completely nonplussed by the question, she started to shake her head, but stopped when she felt the hard muscles of his legs on either side of her. "No, why?"  
  
"There's this smell, whenever you're here, I can smell it, and then for hours after you've left."  
  
Sara swallowed and deliberately turned her hands so that they were gripping his forearms in return to the pressure of his fingers wrapped around her own. "I use this lotion. Jasmine Vanilla," she said quietly.  
  
"That must be it. It's sweet, and strong, and it makes me hard every time I smell it, because…" but he didn't need to explain why. She knew why. It was just like every time she walked into their house, she could smell the scent of Lincoln's skin. She remembered the feel and the taste and everything flooded back into her head, and she knew she could never have it again so it made the memory all the more precious. She also didn't think years between them would rid her of the pleasure that engulfed her at those memories.  
  
They continued to stare at each other until Sara felt like they'd been kissing for several minutes, her body achy and tight yet fluid in all the right places. She thought maybe she might climax just from the heat of his gaze, but she never got the chance to find out because LJ's voice interrupted the moment. "What are you guys doing?" he asked.  
  
Lincoln's head jerked up, his eyes dragging away from hers, but it was like everything was in slow motion. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, and that wasn't the only place she could feel her blood flowing warmly. She would have looked up at LJ in surprise as well, but her hair was under Lincoln's knees. "Just fooling around," Lincoln said. Smoothly, he moved away from her, let her arms go with the slow drag of his fingers through her own and asked his son, "The cat like her box okay?"  
  
"Yeah, she already went in it and everything." Sara sat up slowly, rubbing her head where the hair had pulled and hurt her scalp.  
  
"You got a name for her, yet?" Lincoln asked.  
  
Sara continued to busy herself with fixing her hair and tugging her shirtsleeves this way and that when LJ asked, "No, you think of something?"   
  
"How about Jasmine?" Lincoln said, his voice deceptive in its casualness. Sara's eyes jerked to his to find him watching her.  
  
"Awww," LJ said. "That's kinda cute. Like the girl in  _Aladdin_. And she's got black hair. That's perfect, Dad!"  
  
Sara recognized for LJ this was a total throw back to his childhood and the pets he'd never had the chance to have. For his father, the meaning was completely different. She didn't know why he was doing it, but it seemed like spite was involved in a weird sort of way. Lincoln's gaze moved away from her to LJ and he said, "Yeah, perfect."


	9. The Champion Wants a Challenger Who Just Might Have the Strength to Take Him Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

“Dad?” LJ’s voice interrupted the action sequence they were watching, both of them slunk down on the sofa with their feet on the coffee table. LJ had Jasmine in his lap and her stroked her head while the cat purred contentedly.  
  
“Yeah?” Lincoln responded, his eyes never leaving the TV.  
  
“You like Sara, don’t you?”  
  
Lincoln turned his head half way between LJ and the TV. “Of course, I like her,” he said, barely glancing at his son before returning his attention to Matt Damon beating the bloody hell out of someone.  
  
“No, I mean you  _like_  her.”  
  
This time Lincoln’s head swiveled all the way to the right to meet LJ’s eyes. “What?”  
  
“You  _like_  her. You know, like Uncle Mike likes her.”  
  
“Are you really asking me this? Why would you ask me that?”  
  
“Because I see how you look at her.”  
  
“How do I look at her?”  
  
LJ sighed, shoved Jasmine off his lap and sat up to turn his body towards Lincoln. “Like you want to eat her up. Like she’s dinner, and you’ve been hungry for a long time. And, I’m thinking you probably need to get that out of your system, because you were in jail a long time, and you haven’t brought any girls home.”  
  
Lincoln forced his eyes back to the television. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and just to show LJ he didn’t want to talk about it, he turned the volume up.  
  
“Dad, I heard you and Jane the other night.” When Lincoln ignored him, LJ reached over and took the remote from his father’s hand. “Dad!”  
  
“LJ, come on,” Lincoln said, making a swipe for the remote control, but LJ muted the volume and flung the offending object across the room, causing Jasmine to sprint down the hall away from them.  
  
“I heard you and Jane talking the other night, out here. I got up to pee and I heard her asking you if you’ve dealt with your feelings for Sara. Uncle Mike gets out of jail in 10 months. You know this isn’t good.”  
  
Lincoln couldn’t fathom getting sympathy from his nearly 17 year old son about something like this, so he did the only thing he could think to do. He lied  _and_  he was mean. “LJ, even if this were a problem, which if you listened in on my fight with Jane the other night, you know I told her I don’t have feelings for Sara, why would I talk about it with  _you_? Come on. Just ‘cause you had eight months of therapy doesn’t mean you can solve my problems. Which I don’t have any. And you’re dreaming if you think I want Sara. She’s your uncle’s girl and nobody knows that better than me.”  
  
“Then why don’t you ever bring any girls home?” LJ demanded.  
  
Surprised that he didn’t slouch off to pout at Lincoln’s unkind words, Lincoln got up and walked over to where the remote was lying on the floor. “You never bring any girls home either,” he pointed out.  
  
“I’ve been working hard with school stuff, and trying to get my head on straight. And right now all the girls at my school are only interested in me because they think I’m a little mini-celebrity because of what happened. I don’t need that. Besides Dr. Wells said it’s common to try to jump into something you’re not ready for to ignore all the things you need to work on in your life. So I decided to wait until I go to college to look for a girlfriend.”  
  
LJ’s explanation was so mature and well thought out that Lincoln could feel his face growing warm as prickly heat suffused his skin. Leaning down he scooped up the remote and fiddled with the battery covering on the back. “That’s real good, LJ, good ideas, yep, they sure are.”  
  
“Dad…” There was a plea there, a need that Lincoln recognized because it lived inside him too. To be honest, to say what he thought, what he felt, to have a place where he didn’t defend himself with lies and explanations that went in circles and made no fucking sense. On the other hand, to say it out loud, to acknowledge it, to let it live in the air around him—that was a surefire way to never getting past it as far as Lincoln could tell. He didn’t respond, and the silence stretched out between him and LJ until LJ’s voice came again quietly, “I won’t think anything bad about you if you like her, Dad. I mean, she’s awesome. And hella hot. And you sorta, you know, match. I don’t know, I think maybe if Uncle Mike hadn’t already called dibs, I’d really want you to hook up with her.”  
  
Lincoln’s throat closed off and he felt like he was the teenager instead of just being addressed by one. He turned around and pointed the remote at the television, turning it off. “I can’t talk about this, LJ,” he finally said.  
  
“You can’t talk about anything, Dad! You won’t talk about granddad, you won’t talk about Vee, and now, you won’t talk about Sara. All we ever talk about is Algebra and the Civil War. What the hell are you doing?” LJ’s hand smacked the sofa in frustration.  
  
“I talk about your granddad and Vee!”  
  
“When?” LJ demanded. “I never hear you say a damn thing about either of them!”  
  
Lincoln paused, his eyes held captive by his son’s belligerent gaze. “I talked about them to Sara,” he said, the realization crashing down on him, crushing him with its dead weight. “And Jane, I’ve talked to Jane,” he added a few seconds later, a hasty tack-on that felt as stupid as it sounded.  
  
The comprehension that was slowly dawning in LJ’s tone battered Lincoln’s ears. “When did you talk to Sara about it? I’m always with you when you’re with Sara.” He paused and Lincoln’s eyes bounced around the room, hitting everything but not landing anywhere, especially not on his son’s face. “Wait a minute. Was that where you were, all those times, when I—“ he didn’t finish the question, because during the six months Lincoln and Sara had been seeing each other on a regular basis Lincoln had used a myriad of lies: he’d been at the gym, or job hunting, or he’d been somewhere with Jane. There had been more than one occasion when Jane had said something that unwittingly tipped LJ off because he’d look at Lincoln and say,  _I thought you guys went to the movies then?_  or whatever it had been that Lincoln had led him to believe. “Oh, shit,” LJ muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “It’s too late, huh? You already…”  
  
“It’s over, LJ. It’s over. It was a mistake and it’s over and that’s all that needs to be said about it.”  
  
“I feel like such an idiot. I was all wrapped up in my emotional damage and you were screwing Uncle Mike’s girlfriend?”  
  
“LJ,” Lincoln tried, but the defeated feeling flooded through him and he just shook his head.  
  
“What? You’ve got some great reason for this? I’m dying to hear it.” When Lincoln didn’t say anything, LJ added, “Maybe I’ll ask Sara when she comes over on Saturday. How are we all supposed to act when Uncle Mike comes home? Like we’re cool with passing the goodies around in this family?”  
  
“You watch your mouth,” Lincoln growled. “And if you say a word to her, I’ll beat you into next year, you hear me?”  
  
“How could you do that, Dad? How? After what Uncle Mike did for you?”  
  
Lincoln spun around towards the wall and slammed his arms full length, from elbow to wrist up against the plaster. “I know! I know! Don’t you think I know, LJ? I don’t need you tell me. I don’t need anyone to tell me! God forgive me, but I did it. And I liked it, every single time, and the only reason it’s not still going on is because she figured it out. She knows she can do better than me, and don’t you think I haven’t wondered a million fucking times how I’m going to watch her with your uncle?  
  
“You know what crazy thought I had yesterday? I thought maybe I’ll just go with you to California. If you’re gonna move to Irvine, then so will I. And then I won’t have to see it. Or I’ll only have to see it a couple times a year when they come to visit us. Merry fucking Christmas and summers at the beach watching his hands all over her…” Pounding his clenched fists against the wall, he pressed his forehead into it until pain shot through his temples, but he didn’t stop. He kept hitting the wall and pushing against it like maybe he could just bust through it, through the pain of what he was saying, what he’d been feeling every day, and especially every Saturday while Sara tucked her hair behind her ears and stood over him as he memorized cell parts.  
  
“Dad?” LJ stood right next to him suddenly and his hand gripped Lincoln’s shoulder. Twisting, Lincoln moved away from the wall and from his son. “Dad, come on, don’t freak out. Look at me. Look at me. Dad!” LJ caught Lincoln’s shoulders in his hands and forced Lincoln to stand still and look his son in the face. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I didn’t know…I mean I thought you might like her a little, or maybe she got you hot, you know? I didn’t realize you…”  
  
Lincoln stared hard into the eyes that were the only part of him physically that LJ had received. Everything else about him was like Lisa, his stature, his nose, the way his lips came up in a perfect bow beneath it. He looked into his son’s eyes—his own eyes—and succumbed to the brutal truth that had been abusing him for weeks. “I love her,” he said when LJ didn’t. “I’m in love with her, and it’s the biggest fuckin’ mistake of my life, and that includes going into that parking garage in 2001. Fuck,” he spat, jamming a forefinger and thumb into his eye sockets. “What am I gonna do, LJ?” he asked. And that’s when he knew how bad it really was. He was asking  _his son_  of all people, what to do about a situation he’d created.  
  
 _We’re the kind of people who create situations. We’re the kind of people who fuck things up, and everyone looking in thinks we did it on purpose._  
  
He heard Sara’s words echoing in the chambers of his heart while his ears heard LJ say, “I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know.” He blew out a frustrated breath and pulled away from LJ’s grasp. Embarrassed, he awkwardly walked back to the sofa and sat down heavily. Standing in the middle of the living room rug LJ added, “But we’ll figure it out. You always said that to me when I was a little kid and I didn’t know how to do something. You always said we could figure it out together. We still can.”  
  
Lincoln forced his lips up in a half smile. “This isn’t an after-school special, LJ. Your uncle will want to kill me if he ever finds out and I’d probably let him because it would be better than this misery.”  
  
LJ walked back to the sofa. “We’ll figure something out. Uncle Mike never has to know, and you just need to stay away from Sara until you get over it.”  
  
“You think it’s that easy?” Lincoln asked doubtfully.  
  
“Easy? No. But it is that simple. That’s the only answer. Isn’t it?”  
  
Lincoln sighed loudly, his heart clenching so hard he might have thought it was an actual physical condition. “Yes. It’s the only answer.”  



	10. I Could Cry and Say I Need You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from "I Want You" by Faith Hill

In March, Sara and LJ accompanied Lincoln to the Adult School/GED Center in downtown Chicago. It was a Saturday, and the test was supposed to take two hours, and even though Lincoln said they didn’t have to come with him, the closer it got to the day of the test, the more nervous he became.   
  
She’d arrived early at their apartment, while LJ was still in the shower. “It’s no big deal. I can come down with you. I don’t have to work today anyway.”   
  
His agitation had been palpable. “Aren’t you supposed to visit Michael today?”   
  
She’d just stared at him. “Lincoln, it’s 8am. I have all day to go to Statesville. And besides, don’t you think Michael would like to hear how you did? I can at least tell him how you felt about the test when I see him, even though the results won’t come for a couple weeks.”   
  
He’d nodded and then paced away from her. Finally, though Sara thought it might be awkward between them, she’d chased him and grabbed him by his wrists, forcing him to stand still in front of her. “Look at me. You are going to blaze through this test, do you hear me? You know all the material, you’re plenty smart enough, and all you have to do is take your time. You’re going to be fine.”   
  
His shoulders visibly relaxed and he slumped down a little. “Thanks,” he said lowly and a sheepish smile touched his face. “I know that, I really do. I’m just...nervous as hell. But really, you don’t have to go down there with me.” He gently pulled free of her grasp and he shook his head. “It’s stupid for you to come and sit there while I’m in a room taking a test.”  
  
“I want to come with you,” Sara had replied truthfully. The look on his face was somewhere between pained delight and disappointment. Sara had been relieved when LJ appeared a few moments later and they headed downtown.   
  
It was rather warm for March, and so they decided to wait outside together. The bench in front of the building held them comfortably, and Sara was reading a book for most of the time they sat there while LJ played one of those hand-held video games. Just as she finished a chapter, she noticed LJ watching her. He’d been unusually quiet, but she figured he was just as nervous as Lincoln so she hadn’t pushed him into talking.   
  
“Can I ask you something?” he asked. Setting her book aside, Sara nodded. LJ stared at his Gameboy for a long moment before flipping the screen shut. “I’ve got these two friends, at school, these two guys. They’ve been friends forever, and now they like the same girl.” He paused and looked up at her. Sara leaned forward slightly, and nodded again to encourage him to speak. “I’ve just been a casual observer of all this, and my dad says since I went to therapy I think I can fix everyone, but I just thought I’d ask you, since you’re a woman.”   
  
“Ask me what?”   
  
“If you were the girl, and you knew both of these guys wanted you, and you knew they were so close, I mean, they’re like brothers, you know? If you were the girl, you’d just take yourself out of it, right? I mean, wouldn’t that be the right thing to do?”   
  
Sara didn’t respond right away. She stared at LJ and wondered if he really thought he could ask her a hypothetical question like this, that was so like her own situation and not have her know what he was asking. It pissed her off for a split second too. “Does this girl like them both?” she asked.   
  
LJ shrugged. “I don’t know. From what I can tell, I guess so. I mean, they are both great guys, but they’re really different, so I don’t know how you could like both. Aren’t people supposed to have a type or something?”   
  
“At 16? I doubt it,” Sara said with some sarcasm.   
  
“They’re 17,” LJ said quickly.   
  
“Oh, well, that makes all the difference,” she said.   
  
At that remark, Sara couldn’t think of any teenager who would willingly go on with the conversation when he had just been condescended to, but with a tenaciousness that reminded her of Michael, LJ continued. “Come on, Sara. Don’t you think if I talked to her and pointed this out, she would realize that the right thing to do would be to leave them alone? Blood’s thicker than water and all that?”   
  
Sara crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. “If they’re such good friends, why doesn’t one of them bow out?” she asked. “I mean, if they love each other, and they’ve been friends forever, shouldn’t that concern them more than some girl they hardly know? Why is it on the girl to do the right thing?”   
  
“They both love the girl,” LJ said softly, dropping her gaze.   
  
Sara’s breath caught in her chest and she said the only thing she could come up with, “They both  _think_  they love her, maybe; but what about how they feel about each other? Isn’t that the most important thing?”   
  
LJ nodded his head vigorously. “One of them is probably more willing to do that than the other one,” he said. “But, the one who knows that the right thing is to walk away from the girl, he’s having a hard time doing it. And she’s encouraging him, so...”   
  
“That makes it tough for him to do the right thing.”   
  
“Exactly.”   
  
Sara pretended to ponder it all for a moment. What she wanted to do was reach out, wrap her hands around LJ’s neck and ask him what right he had to judge her, but then she quickly argued with herself that he was just a kid and all he could see was the potential for his family being ripped apart, which of course she had already figured out for herself. She had no intention of staying in their lives once Michael got out of prison. It was too much to ask, even if Michael never knew, or even if he could forgive her if he did know. She had intended since she showed up on Lincoln’s doorstep with textbooks to help him pass the GED to end things with Michael soon after he got out of prison. He had less than eight months to go now, and the last couple of months with Lincoln had been strained at best.   
  
They still kept up with their study habits, but he had begun gently ushering her out the door earlier and earlier every Saturday until she realized all his excuses (dinner with Jane, a Bulls’ game, a special boys’ night out for him and LJ) were just excuses, and things he could have done any other day of the week. He was purposely pushing her out of his life after she had purposely pushed her way back in; she was smart enough to understand it and be hurt by it.   
  
With LJ’s under-the-radar explanation, she realized Lincoln was still letting himself have some contact with her while his son thought it best he have none at all. LJ didn’t have the power to hurt her like Lincoln did, and in an odd way it made her less hurt over what Lincoln was doing, because he seemed unable to cut all ties for some reason... _because he loved her_? She didn’t buy that. LJ probably just had no other label for the situation and that seemed the most convenient definition. She knew Lincoln wanted her and for whatever reason Jane didn’t fulfill that particular need as thoroughly as Sara had.   
  
But this was the ultimate. LJ thinking he could shame her into something that she already knew made her want to smack his face and tell him she was a grown-up who didn’t need to be dictated to. But she recognized her anger as adolescent, so she quelled it as best she could. She was suddenly mad at Lincoln too, for telling LJ and she wondered why in the world he had.   
  
In reality she knew the answer to that as well; she would give anything to have someone to talk to about it, but there was no one. She had kept up her visits with Michael at least once a week, and they were often the highlight of her week, not because she didn’t have other things to do, but because she felt so wanted when she was with him. Nothing was quite as pathetic as wanting one man to make you feel a certain way but having another perform the service in his place, and that thought came back to her every time a voice whispered in her head,  _You can have Michael. It’s all right_.   
  
She couldn’t have Michael when every time she sat with him and his fingers were wrapped around hers she wanted to confess to him that his brother was all she ever thought about.   
  
She knew it wasn’t right, but she would keep visiting him until he was free and could figure it out on his own. Finally she sighed and answered LJ’s query, “If I were you,” she said, upholding the ridiculous charade they were playing, “I’d consider my work done, LJ. You can’t tell people how to live their lives. All you can do is offer advice and hope to God they figure it out on their own.”   
  
“What if they don’t?” he asked.   
  
She laughed in her throat, but it didn’t sound like a happy sound at all. Just as the door swung open and Lincoln came striding towards them with a huge smile on his face, she finished the conversation with, “Make sure you have a safe place to hide when the shit hits the fan.”   
  


  
  
Several weeks later, while in the grocery store, Sara weighed a bag full of produce. She had managed to go on with her life; her final contact with Lincoln and LJ had been that day in front of the testing center. Lincoln had been confident he placed well, and after hearty hugs all around he had pulled his cell phone out to call Jane immediately. They agreed to meet at a restaurant a few blocks from the testing center, but Sara had begged off and headed over to Statesville to deliver the news to Michael.   
  
Taking her cue from LJ, she had stopped calling, and that first Saturday following, when she would have normally gone to their house, she went for a run instead. Lincoln hadn’t called, and she hadn’t expected him too. They were at the natural end of things and if she was smart, she’d just let it go that direction.   
  
Naturally.   
  
When Michael got out in November, she might even be able to, in good conscience, let something happen between them. She was bound to stop thinking about Lincoln by then, and by then it would have been almost a year since she and Lincoln had even been together in a more-than-friends sort of way.   
  
At least that’s what she told herself when she was feeling good. On her bad days, on the days when she longed to hear his voice, or missed the times he wadded paper up in frustration and flung it across the living room, or thought too long about his hands on her body, she knew that all the back in the forth in the world could never change the past.   
  
It had been by default that she had ended up with Lincoln; she had examined it from every side, and now she believed that first time, when she had climbed into bed with him in New Mexico, it had been partly in anger at Michael for leaving her there. But the beginning motivation had been lost in the heat of his touch and the echoing need she felt in him that had nothing to do with Michael and everything to do with the emptiness in their lives. Her emptiness was now filled with memories of Lincoln, whether it was right, wrong or somewhere in between.   
  
So she weighed it back and forth, the thing Jane had said to her in that Starbucks so long ago:  _I know that you two thought you could do whatever you were doing with no consequences_. It wasn’t so much that she’d thought there would be no consequences as it was that she had decided whatever the consequences were they were worth it to her. Until she’d faced Lincoln’s devastation. He’d tried in various ways to say he was sorry about what he’d said that morning, the last morning they’d made love. He’d never said it in so many words, but he’d made sure she knew he thought she was good enough for his brother, in every way.   
  
They’d never talked about his drinking or her drug problem, but the idea that he had lost his sobriety over saying something hurtful to her struck her as no more bizarre than her losing hers over leaving a door unlocked. It wasn’t the size of the trigger; it was the wake it left behind. Leaving the door unlocked meant she’d cared more about Michael than her job, what her father thought of her, what the State of Illinois thought of her, more than what she had thought of herself, which was that she had promised she’d never let a man manipulate her again, especially not when she was stone cold sober. She’d wanted Michael to ask her for drugs because she could have nobly stood before him and explained why she wouldn’t do that, but instead he’d been asking for something no more tangible than the brief high from a hit.   
  
He asked her to make a mistake, and she hadn’t stopped making them since. Except that Lincoln turned out to be a mistake she didn’t regret, at least not in the way she should. And it was her strength that kept her from his doorstep, but it was his rejection that gave her strength.   
  
“Sara?” She flinched and turned, wondering how long she’d been standing in front of the fruit stand weighing her bag of apples. She saw pale blonde hair first, and then her eyes met Jane’s. “I thought it was you,” Jane said, approaching her  
  
“Jane! Hi!” she said with fake enthusiasm. She plastered a smile on her face and turned around to face Jane fully. She didn’t feel anything negative, she told herself. Except that Jane was welcomed to the life Sara could never have. With no guilt or remorse or anger or aching in her heart, Jane could do whatever she wanted.  
  
That wasn’t fair; Sara was sure Jane would have given anything if Aldo could be back with them, and not for purely selfish reasons. She loved Lincoln, LJ and Michael enough to wish they’d had more time with the father and grandfather they’d hardly known.  
  
Before she knew what was going on, Jane had pulled her into a hug. Sara patted her back awkwardly and hung in the embrace for what seemed like a small eternity. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you,” Jane said as she drew back. “You look good.”  
  
That somehow made Sara both happy and sad. Happy that she could appear fine when she was anything but and sad because the report back to Lincoln would be that she was great. Which is exactly what he needed to hear to go on with his life also. “Thanks. You look well, too. How are things?”  
  
“Everything’s great. You know LJ got accepted to UC:Irvine, so he’s planning on moving out to California, as am I.”  
  
“I didn’t know that! That’s great. Tell him I said congratulations.” Sara turned and pulled her bag of apples from the scale and placed them in her cart. “So you’re moving back to California, huh? How does Lincoln feel about that?”  
  
As Sara glanced back up, Jane actually looked embarrassed and she shook her head. “Wait, you haven’t talked to Lincoln? He said he was going to call you.”  
  
“No, there’s really been no reason, you know, now that he’s taken the GED. We just sorta lost touch after that.” Not a complete lie. Yes, a complete lie. A complete and utter lie. She’d almost called him everyday for two months, she’d purposely gone shopping at the market across town from her own house thinking maybe she might run into him or LJ, though she hated to think what hypothetical situation LJ would cook up should he run into her again. But here she was, a habit had formed, and now she always shopped here, running into Jane. She should have known Lincoln wouldn’t do his own shopping, not when he could get Jane to do it for him.  
  
“Well, when he calls you, act surprised. He also got accepted to UC:Irvine and he’s moving with LJ out there. I’m sure he’s told Michael, he just went up and visited him earlier this week.”  
  
Sara struggled to find her voice—to say anything coherent after this pronouncement—but found that all she could utter was “I see Michael on Saturdays now, so I haven’t seen him yet this week.”  
  
Jane nodded as if that made perfect sense and then her hand reached out to wrap around Sara’s arm. “I just had to thank you, for what you did for Lincoln. He aced his GED exam and when he took the entrance exam for the university, he tested at the top of both math and English so he’ll start at college level in all of his general ed classes. I can’t believe he didn’t call you when he got the results. He actually cried, Sara,  _cried_  when he read the test scores. It was just…” she shook her head again. “Well, it was all because of you, and he owes you a great big thank you, and so do I. You were able to turn lemons into lemonade, if I may be so cliché and blasé about the whole thing. I must say, when you decide to rectify something, you don’t mess around.”  
  
Sara couldn’t have stopped the tears if she tried, but she dabbed at her face with the sleeve of her shirt and tried not to draw attention to herself from the various produce workers near her and Jane. She couldn’t decide what motivated the tears more, that Lincoln did so well, that he didn’t call her to tell her, or that he was moving all the way to California without so much as a goodbye. Finally she asked around the lump in her throat, “What does Michael think of you guys moving?”  
  
“He’s very supportive of it. He told Lincoln he didn’t think he could ever live out there, and Lincoln said it would probably just be for as long as it takes him to get a degree, but I don’t know. We’ll see what happens, I guess.” Jane shrugged her shoulders in a giddy, excited way that told Sara she was sure once she got Lincoln out to California it would be no trouble to keep him there.  
  
And why not? What would be in Chicago except bad memories? His future, in the form of this woman and a good education, sat out on the sunny horizon in the land of beautiful sun-baked bodies and blonde hair. Jane would fit right in.  
  
God, when had she become so catty and mean? Right here, right now. Biting her tongue, Sara forced cheer into her voice as the words came out and her tears subsided. “Well, good luck out there, and tell Lincoln…and LJ, that I said good luck to them too. Tell Lincoln he doesn’t need to call me. It was just good enough to hear it all turned out so well.”  
  
Jane stared at her for a long moment and said, “I’m sure he’ll call you anyway. But I’ll tell them I saw you when I see them. And we’ll see you, when Michael brings you out to visit anyway, right?”  
  
Sara looked into the bluest blue eyes of the prettiest woman she’d ever wished she had a good reason to hate and lied with her whole heart. “I hope so.”  



	11. Nothing But the Bare and Naked Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

Lincoln struggled to get his car key in the keyhole to unlock the door. (Annoyed, he decided that the first thing he’d do when he moved to California was buy a new car with automatic locks.) He attempted to pat himself down and figure out which pocket he’d stuck his loudly ringing cell phone, the special tone indicating that someone from Statesville Penitentiary was calling him.   
  
He flipped the phone open and got his car door ajar at the same time and as he waited for the operator to ask if he’d accept the collect call, he sat down in the driver’s seat. “Yes,” he said when the opportune moment arrived, then, “Hey, Mike, what’s up?”   
  
“I need you to do me a favor,” Michael announced, skipping the how-are-you formality.   
  
Lincoln glanced at his watch. He had ten minutes to get across town to the tailor where LJ was being fitted for a tux. Yes, a tux. The kid was going to prom; because he’d finally found a girl who wasn’t impressed with his celebrity, the same one he’d been chasing for three weeks straight until she finally gave in and said she’d go to the prom with him. (The irony that her name was Sarah with an ‘h’ was not lost on his father.) “Whatever you need,” he responded. His brother’s voice held a spark of urgency, but that didn’t tip Lincoln off to anything as he was thinking about traffic and how there was no way in hell he’d get to the tuxedo shop in ten minutes.   
  
“I need you to call Sara. Better yet, you should go to her house. I just talked to her and she didn’t sound too good.”   
  
Lincoln’s attention narrowed to the top of the steering wheel and his heart rate speeded up. “What’s the matter with her?” he demanded, his voice harsh.   
  
“Don’t you remember what today is?”   
  
Lincoln thought hard for a moment, and though it was June 1st, he couldn’t think of anything immediately. “Should I?”   
  
“I would think since our father died on June 4th, you might remember that hers died on June 1st, but I guess I’m the only one who cares about stuff like that.”   
  
Lincoln felt his defenses rise up like little soldiers, but he didn’t snap back at his brother. He suddenly felt too worried about Sara himself, and if Michael was calling, it was a sure sign of trouble.   
  
But seeing her…that was out of the question.   
  
“I’ll give her a call,” he said. “I’ve got to go pick up LJ, so I’ll call her right now. We’ve got stuff going on, though, Mike, and I don’t think I’ll be able to go over there.”  _I know that I won’t_ , he thought darkly. He had avoided her at all costs, made sure he didn’t even tell her what was going on with him so that the severing would be clean. The jagged edges that sometimes dragged at his heart couldn’t be avoided, but he didn’t need to aggravate himself purposely. If he’d learned anything from LJ, that was it. Therapy was indeed a great idea, he’d decided.   
  
Of course, it had been Sara’s idea. And now she needed him.  
  
“I think she was trying to be strong for me, Linc, but for you, she’d be honest. She’d let her guard down and cry like she should and then she’ll feel better. Please, do what you can for her.”   
  
“Consider it done,” Lincoln said tightly, wondering how he could manage to provide any of that in just a phone call. Assuming she would even take a phone call from him.   
  
“I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t tell her I sent you over there. That will just make it harder for her to open up.”   
  
Lincoln almost laughed out loud.  _Oh, Michael, you have no idea_. The odds of Sara crying on his shoulder were slim at best, because she was probably pissed at him. But anger made you stronger, and maybe that’s what she needed right now to get through the anniversary of her father’s death. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he responded.   
  


  
  
Because it could have led to an ugly confrontation with LJ, he decided to wait to call Sara. LJ had study plans with some kid from his chemistry class, so just as he was getting ready to go out the door, Lincoln said, “I might not be here when you get home…” and because he couldn’t bring himself to tell LJ that Michael wanted him to help Sara, he found a new lie to tell. “Because I’ve got a date.”   
  
“Really?” LJ asked, a grin splitting his lips widely.   
  
“Really. So, you know, if I get lucky…”   
  
“Well, I won’t worry about you until tomorrow then. What’s her name?”   
  
Of course, Lincoln thought, never fully prepared for all the lies he would need to tell when he started a new one. “Liz,” he said quickly, unsure why it popped into his head. “I met her the other day at the…post office.” God, he truly sucked at this.   
  
“Okay, cool. Well, I definitely won’t be home until late. Jason is a chemistry brainiac and I’ll need all the help he can give me to get a passing grade on this final.” Then LJ winked, a cheeky guy-to-guy leer smearing across his face. “Give her hell, Dad,” he said.   
  
Lincoln laughed because he couldn’t help it. “I’ll try,” he said, lifting a hand to wave his son out the door.   
  
Then he sat staring at his cell phone for a good 15 minutes, trying to formulate a beginning sentence, but all he could think about was how he’d lied to LJ because he didn’t know what the hell he was about to do, and it wreaked of a hideous, pre-meditated sin.   
  
You know, the best kind.   
  
Finally he flipped open his phone and pushed the button to call Sara. He’d never taken her number off his cell phone, though he had intended to. He just hadn’t gotten around to it. Just like he hadn’t gotten around to getting her off his mind. Because no matter how busy he was with plans for a move across the country, or registering for college classes he couldn’t believe he was taking, or any of a hundred other things, there was always time to think about Sara, and talk himself into calling her to tell her what was going on, just to talk himself out of it until his mind spun crazily with what he should do and couldn’t do and would do and would never allow himself to do again.   
  
He knew her answering machine picked up after the fourth ring, so when the third ring began he felt certain she wasn’t going to answer the phone, probably just because the caller I.D. told her it was him. When he heard her voice say “Hello,” he paused half a beat, almost forgetting he needed to say something. “Hello?” she asked again and the slight hitch in her voice gave him the proverbial prod forward.   
  
“Sara, it’s Linc,” he said, as completely unoriginal as possible.   
  
“Hi,” she said, and he thought he heard her sniff.   
  
Pausing again, he almost asked the next unoriginal thing people always say to each other,  _How are you?_  but restrained himself at the last moment, knowing she wasn’t well at all. If he thought he sucked at lying to LJ, this was proof that he sucked worse at trying to comfort someone he longed to make feel wonderful. “I heard you were having a rough day,” he finally said, his voice soft.   
  
“I knew he would call you,” she said, her voice dull and lifeless.   
  
“Baby, I’m sorry,” he said, the words rolling off his tongue so artfully he couldn’t snatch them back. He hadn’t called her by any terms of endearment, especially not the one they’d exchanged most frequently since the morning they’d ‘broken up,’ but it slipped out as naturally and sincerely as anything he could say. His fingers clenched around the phone and he squeezed his eyes shut. All he wanted was to be there with her, wrapping his arms around her to hold her while she grieved. It was the most complicatedly simple thing in the world, and he wanted it with a fierceness that startled him. He’d faced that he was in love with her, he’d faced that it would be torture to watch her with his brother. What he hadn’t faced stretched out in the silence between them. It had nothing to do with his brother touching her and everything to do with this. Michael couldn’t be there for her now, so he wanted to send Lincoln in his place, but soon, very soon, Michael would be there and all of this, hell that it was, would melt away.   
  
Her need for him would disappear. That was what he didn’t want to see, didn’t want to feel. Didn’t want to know.  
  
“Don’t feel sorry for me, Lincoln,” she snapped, her voice coming back strongly. “I don’t need your pity and I sure as hell don’t need an afterthought of a phone call. Tell Michael you called and I was fine and don’t trouble yourself anymore.”   
  
When he heard the phone slam down in his ear, he was already on his feet and halfway to the front door. He dialed her right back and said vehemently into the phone when the machine picked up, “I’m on my way over there, and if you don’t open the door, I swear I will beat it down.”   
  
Then he wished he hadn’t given her a heads up, since it would take at least 20 minutes to get there. His relief at seeing her car parked next to the curb outside her apartment building a dangerously short amount of time later was enormous. He took the stairs two at a time and beat his fist on the door hard. She didn’t open it right away, not that he expected her to, but when he bellowed, “Sara Wayne Tancredi, open this fuckin’ door,” it swung wide along with at least two of her neighbor’s doors.   
  
He didn’t wait to be invited in, but plunged himself into the room and shut the door firmly behind him. Her face would have been enough to tell him how bad things were as it was splotchy and red, but when his eyes landed on the bottle of Jack Daniel’s sitting on her coffee table, he had to put a hand back against the door to steady himself. From where he stood, he could see the bottle was unopened, but that didn’t stop it from being as devastating an idea as a bottle of Liquid Plumber in its place. “You don’t need to be here,” she said, turning away from him and walking back into the living room.   
  
“You sure about that?” he asked, following her closely.   
  
“I’m absolutely positive,” she replied while he reached out tentatively to wrap his fingers around her arm and pull her back to face him. He wanted to look into her eyes and see how serious she was about that bottle of booze. “Don’t touch me, you bastard,” she cried when his fingers brushed at her skin and she whirled, coming at him like a tornado. Her hands went up, her fingers curling into fists and she flung herself forward until she hit his chest and then she just went crazy. Lincoln had never seen anything like it, except maybe Veronica in her hellcat days, but it was the only thing he’d ever seen Sara do that reminded him in any way of his former lover.   
  
He had loved Veronica with all the ferocity of his youth, but what he felt for Sara was the mature, solid emotion that accompanied adulthood, should one ever cross over into it. The feeling seemed as though it would never fade, and it wasn’t the desperate I-need-to-touch-you-to-know-I-feel-this-way urgency that he remembered so well about his love affair with Veronica.  
  
It was no less real, even if was completely different because he was different, older, but none the wiser. But Sara, flailing against him and screaming that she didn’t want him there and she didn’t need his pity and he was a fucking bastard for coming here just because Michael told him too and she wished he’d already left for California so she could just have some peace punched at his insides more hurtfully than any sharp edged knuckles shoved into his stomach ever could.   
  
Wrapping his arms around her, he forced her into submission, albeit slowly and by using all the strength in his upper body. Only being a slip of a girl hardly mattered when her legs and arms and body were so long that they were hard to control, and she was moving so wildly that he wished he had something to manacle her wrists together at the small of her back as he stumbled around and tried to get his leg around hers to keep her from kicking him in the groin.   
  
Somehow they ended up on the sofa, with her straddling him, and Lincoln even had a moment to think how  _not_  turned on he was right then even though it was the most intimate they’d been in months. They both were breathing heavily, the exertion it had taken to put forth that much energy on her part and then trying to restrain it on his part echoing through the room.   
  
Then Lincoln heard music wafting from her CD player.  _Like a Rhinestone Cowboy/Riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo/Like a rhinestone cowboy/Getting cards and letters from people I don't even know/And offers comin' over the phone_. And maybe because no other reaction could come forth, he asked, “What the hell is  _this_?”   
  
Sara couldn’t move because her feet were trapped under his thighs and his arms surrounded her upper body, pinning her arms to her sides. But their eyes met, and he could see that she knew he was asking about the ludicrous music they could both hear. “There’s a lot of songs people get drunk to, Sara, but ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ isn’t one of them.”   
  
An amazing thing happened right before his eyes after he said that. She crumpled, inwardly at first and then physically. Her shoulders slumped and her body, which had been rigidly held even in his bear-trap formation of legs tucked under legs and arms strapped down to prevent her from hitting him, relaxed with the downpour. Like clouds opening overhead on a stormy day, she burst into tears, and her face landed against his heart. “M-my d-d-dad loved G-glen Camp-campbell,” she explained, the words stopping and starting with each sobbing breath she took.  
  
Lincoln’s arms relaxed from around her body and he slid his hands up her back until one palm cradled the base of her skull. “Shhh,” he whispered, even though he didn’t want her to be silent. He wanted her to do whatever she needed to to feel better and if beating the hell out of him and bawling her eyes out all over him was what she needed, he was happy to oblige.  
  
Now that her arms were free, they stole around him, sliding between his back and the sofa. She cried for a while before quieting, and her body still trembled with sobs even when fresh tears weren’t falling. Her head shifted and she turned her face away from him, but snuggled herself into the curve of his neck and shoulder, allowing him the luxury of holding her for an unknown length of time. Lincoln found himself rubbing her back and realizing he knew a lot more Glen Campbell songs than he ever would have guessed. When a song started with a little piano riff, he listened intently, wondering if he would know this one too, but it ended up being a new to his ears song about a guy working for the county. He was starting to zone out since he didn’t know it and his focus returned to the beautifully sad woman draped over him when the clear tones of the singer’s voice cut through his heart. “And I need you, more than want you, and I want you for all time,” Glen Campbell sang and Lincoln’s stomach heaved and his grip on her tightened because he reacted to the words as if they were his own thoughts, because suddenly they were.   
  
Sara stirred, lifting her head slowly, and he wondered if she’d heard the words or if she just didn’t like having her ribs compressed. Before she could address either option, Lincoln asked, “So what’s the plan with that bottle of Jack?”  
  
Rubbing a hand over her cheek, she looked away and shrugged her shoulders half-heartedly. “I hadn’t gotten that far yet.”  
  
“Just sittin’ here starin’ at it, huh?” he asked.  
  
“So far,” she conceded.  
  
“There’s only two choices, really, baby. We drink it together, get shit-faced, fuck all night long, and start this whole thing over again or we walk into the kitchen and pour it down the drain.”  
  
Sara’s eyes rounded in horror at his bluntness and then her expression softened as she searched his face for the real answer. “I’m not pouring it down the drain,” she said. “That’s 20 bucks, good as gone if I do that.”  
  
“Better wasted money than a wasted life.”  
  
She snorted, and he knew that was too clichéd for them. “Whatever,” she muttered, sliding off his lap.  
  
He leaned forward and wrapped his fingers around the bottle. “We’ve become masters at self-control, Sara. Now is not the time to lose the ground we’ve gained. This is about the only thing we can do together. Do it with me.” She studied her fingers for a moment before dragging her eyes up to his. He put his free hand out towards her. “Please.”  
  
The longer she looked at him the louder Glen Campbell was in his head. And then he thought of Michael, sitting alone in his cell, hoping Sara was all right, hoping Lincoln could step in for him, one more time, one  _last_  time, and get her through one more day without him. When her fingers slid across his palm, he thought that of all the things his brother ever needed him to do, this was the hardest one. Everything else had been a physical sacrifice, loss of sleep to work longer hours to pay off a debt he could never get the better of, going without food so Michael could eat, going without a warm coat so Michael had the clothes he needed. Being there because Michael had neither a father nor a mother. But this, here, giving up Sara, it wasn’t physical. He could live without her body, without the feel of silky skin and the scent that she carried with her everywhere. What he didn’t want to be without was the way she fit in his heart, the way he understood her. He knew she wanted that drink, but she wanted a reason not to do it more, and he understood that.  
  
Could Michael ever understand that? Michael had never done anything that he hadn’t thought about in advance for a long time. Lincoln could count on two fingers the things he’d ever done that he’d consciously thought about first, and one of them was walking into a parking garage to kill someone he didn’t know to pay a debt that endangered everyone he loved. The second was right here, right now, knowing that whatever transpired between now and when he left Sara’s apartment it had to be the epitome of what he felt for her in deed since it could never be in words.  
  
He wrapped his hand around hers and pulled her to her feet. They walked into the kitchen and he set the bottle on the sideboard in front of her. Without a word, she broke the seal and twisted the cap off. Then she tipped the bottle over and the lush brown liquid rushed out into the sink. When it was empty, she gripped the bottle tightly in her fist and threw it down so that it shattered into the sink, chunks of glass flying all different directions.  
  
“That’ll do it,” Lincoln said succinctly.  
  
She looked up at him and her face crumpled again, so he wrapped his arm around her neck and tugged her into his chest. She cozied right up to him and slipped her arms about his waist, but he could feel a sense of strength returning to her because even though she had started to cry, it eased off much faster than the first go round. He scooped her up into his arms and took her back to the couch and Glen Campbell.  
  


  
  
Some time later, after she had opened up and told him stories about her father that brought a smile to her face more than tears, he began to feel as if he’d done exactly what Michael wanted him to do. The pride welled up in him for more reasons than he could articulate, and he laughed with her as she remembered a time when her father had had to give a speech to a group of Rotary Club members without his notes because she’d poured milk all over them accidentally.  
  
They still sat on the couch, only now she was propped up at one end with her feet resting on his thigh. Sighing, she leaned back, stretching her arms up over her head. “Thank you, Lincoln. For listening. I mean, if I was you, I would have turned right around when all that stuff happened at the front door. So thank you for not bruising too easily.” His eyes were drawn to the line of skin appearing as she continued to stretch back against the arm of the sofa. Her belly was taut, and her navel peeked at him, turning his mind a direction he’d been successfully avoiding for a few hours now. Then the foot on his leg slid northward a little and she said softly, “Really. Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” he replied, but his hand reached down and scooped both her feet up off his leg. “Let’s uh, not get me all riled up, here, okay?” he said with a grin, pushing her legs back so she was no longer touching him. Her eyes changed as she looked at him, the light of happiness slowly fading away, which distressed Lincoln greatly as it had taken so much to get even a little bit of warmth back into her countenance. “What?” he asked defensively. “I’m just being honest. And I’m trying to keep myself in the right theme here.”  
  
“What theme is that? The-feel-sorry-for-Sara theme?”  
  
“Wouldn’t that be better than the-rip-Sara’s-clothes-off theme?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s not like you can’t burn it off with Jane later. You don’t have to have any follow through, you know, at least not here.”  
  
Lincoln’s eyes goggled and his mouth dropped open. He felt the reaction across his face as well as in his nerve endings that caused jerky movements to shoot out in all his limbs. “Excuse me?” he asked, staring at her face, surprised at the bitterness he saw there.  
  
“I could get you all worked up and then you could—“ because he couldn’t smack her face, he placed his hand over her mouth, preventing her from whatever further ridiculous statement she was about to make.   
  
Of course, lunging the length of the sofa to put his hand over her mouth put him practically on top of her and he hadn’t thought about that prior to the movement. “Is there some reason why you refuse to believe that  _I want you_?” he demanded. “I’ve never pretended you were Veronica, or Jane for that matter, and I sure as hell don’t think about you to get it up for someone else. Except maybe myself, but that’s not really any of your business, is it?”  
  
She couldn’t respond with his fingers wrapped around her jaw, but her eyes told him a wealth of things, all of them exactly what he didn’t need to know. “Dammit, Sara,” he growled, heaving himself up on to his feet, both away from her and away from the futon. He’d been avoiding those thoughts all evening too, memories of her naked there under him, on top of him, all around him. “Jane showed up with that lotion you use and I told her she couldn’t wear it around me. I lied and told her I was allergic to it. Can you imagine that? That was the dumbest conversation I’ve ever had, in my entire life, but I had to have it so I wouldn’t think about you every time she’s around. I’ve got to get you out of my head one way or another.”  
  
“That night you called me, in the middle of the fucking night! She was  _in bed_  with you, I heard her voice, all sleepy and sexy next to you,” Sara threw at him.  
  
He couldn’t help the smile that tripped across his mouth. “You’re kidding right? You’re jealous because maybe I slept with Jane? You have no proof, you just jumped to some crazy conclusions, after you made it clear you don’t want to sleep with me anymore?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer as he loomed over her on the sofa. “I called you in the middle of the night because I wanted to hear your voice, and I wasn’t in bed with Jane, I was in the living room and she’d fallen asleep watching TV.  _Next to me on the couch!_  Oh, I know, I said something stupid about not wanting to get up and go get the book, but Sara, come on. I’m like the guy who pulls the girl’s hair because he likes her. That’s why I called that night. I thought maybe I’d find a way to tell you I was sorry, but even if you can forgive me for those horrible things I said, I have to just let it go. I’ve figured it out, finally, that no matter what, I’ve just got to let it go. Let you go.” He turned away and walked to the CD player. He wanted to turn Glen Campbell off, get the songs out of his head, but instead he just turned the device’s volume down.  
  
“Remember when I told you I get cold when I get scared?” she asked, her voice so quiet and removed it took him a moment to come back from the memory that question sparked. He just nodded at her over his shoulder. “When I’m sad, I get mean. Just ignore everything I’ve said. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, and you don’t owe me anything. And whatever you have to do to be happy with Jane, Lincoln, I truly hope you’re doing it.”  
  
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked with a disgruntled wave of his hand. “I’m not with Jane.” He paced back towards the couch.  
  
“You’re moving to California with her,” Sara said, a little accusation in her voice. She continued to look up at him as he was not ready to sit back on the couch with her without tugging her back into his lap. “I saw her at the grocery store and she told me you’re all moving out there.”  
  
“We  _are_  moving out there, but not together-together. Jane is from there, and she’s wanted to go back for a long time. LJ decided he wanted to go to school there, as you know, and instead of fighting with him about it, I just decided to go with him. It’s easier that way, all around.” He left out the part about how his desperately distraught thought had become the only viable solution he and LJ could come up with.  
  
“Oh, Lincoln,” Sara said sadly and she dropped her head into her hands as the tears started again. “How did this become this? How did  _I_  become this? I can never decide if I hate myself because of what we did, or because I still want to do it, or because Michael is this impossibility that I cannot escape and just when I’ve talked myself into knowing I can’t be with him, something else happens that makes me need it so much.”  
  
Dropping down next to her, he gathered her into his arms again. “We’re almost there, now, Sara. Soon enough, he’ll be here with you and you’ll have it the way it should’ve always been. Then this will stop for you and you’ll be fine. You’ll wonder why you ever even wandered off the path because it’s so right for you.”  
  
She shook her head, but he didn’t know what she was saying no to. “Stay with me,” she whispered, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back, her clinging arms tightening around him. “Just stay with me. Tonight, I don’t want to choose, Lincoln. Tonight, I just want you.”  
  
His eyes rolled shut at the invitation in her voice, the one he couldn’t accept, the one that didn’t belong to him. “I’ll hold you while Glen Campbell sings, Sara,” he whispered against her ear. “But I won’t make love to you. I won’t— _I can’t_ —do that just to walk away.”  
  
She nodded her understanding, her head moving under his chin and he sat back on the couch until she rested fully against his chest. “I forgave you a long time ago,” she whispered. “It’s me I can’t forgive, Lincoln. I’ve made such a mess of everything.”  
  
“That’s not true. It just seems like a mess. Once Michael’s here it will all clear up. You’ll see.” He ran a hand through her hair and resigned himself to the fact that when she woke in the morning she’d be alone again; that was what she fought so hard not to break under, all the aloneness. But he couldn’t stay, not just for the night, because he couldn’t stay forever, and to him, they were the same thing.  



	12. All I'm Gonna Give You Is...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from the song "I Want You" by Faith Hill

“Thank you, Lincoln. For listening. I mean, if I was you, I would have turned right around when all that stuff happened at the front door. So thank you for not bruising too easily.” Sara continued to stretch, easing her vertebrate into alignment. As her back popped, she sighed and felt a smile touch her heart. A little happiness had found its way back in, because of Lincoln. Rubbing her foot up his leg in a gesture of thanks, she said again, “Really. Thank you.”   
  
His eyes dropped to her legs, running from her hips down to her toes as he answered, “You’re welcome.” Reaching a hand down, he moved both her feet off his leg. “Let’s uh, not get me all riled up, here, okay?” She watched his mouth quirk up in a grin, but as he pushed her legs away from him, the rejection was more acute than any separation they’d been through before. When he snapped “What?” she realized her face was an open book. “I’m just being honest,” he defended rather hotly. “And I’m trying to keep myself in the right theme here.”   
  
Affronted, she couldn’t help the response that flew off her tongue. “What theme is that? The-feel-sorry-for-Sara theme?”   
  
His eyebrows drew down in a frown and he snapped right back with, “Wouldn’t that be better than the-rip-Sara’s-clothes-off theme?”   
  
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s not like you can’t burn it off with Jane later. You don’t have to have any follow through, you know, at least not here.” Sara was reminded as that sentiment left her lips and entered the atmosphere that she had no desire to ever see Lincoln angry, yet she could never quite help herself from trying to provoke him. But it was true, and it made her more upset than anything else did. Whatever occurred here between them, he was free to take those feelings elsewhere, but she, by her own finagling, was waiting for Michael. Right?   
  
“Excuse me?” he asked, incredulous.   
  
She just couldn’t help pushing it a little bit more. “I could get you all worked up and then you could—“ When he stretched across the sofa and covered her mouth with his hand, she wanted to bite him. Just that quickly, she was back to attack mode and the feeling that since she couldn’t have him she would abuse him incessantly gave her a strange satisfaction.   
  
But before she could bare her teeth, he asked, “Is there some reason why you refuse to believe that  _I want you_?” His other hand was on the arm of the sofa right behind her and he hovered over her. “I’ve never pretended you were Veronica, or Jane for that matter, and I sure as hell don’t think about you to get it up for someone else. Except maybe myself, but that’s not really any of your business, is it?” With that confession, Sara felt her body arch up, and if it wasn’t for the positioning of his arms, she might have lifted her own to surround him and pull him tight against her. She wanted to cry that he didn’t need to imagine any of it, or dwell on memories they had already made. She was his for the taking and she wanted him to take her, in every way, beyond the confines they’d given themselves, beyond the words they used as prisons. Michael was in prison yes, but Sara felt more trapped than she could ever express.   
  
Her name mixed with an expletive rumbled up from his chest and then he pushed himself away from her with much more force than was necessary. With his back to her, he began to talk and Sara restrained herself with more power than she even knew she had over herself the longer he spoke. “Jane showed up with that lotion you use and I told her she couldn’t wear it around me. I lied and told her I was allergic to it. Can you imagine that? That was the dumbest conversation I’ve ever had, in my entire life, but I had to have it so I wouldn’t think about you every time she’s around. I’ve got to get you out of my head one way or another.”   
  
While his words told her everything she wanted to know, she still harbored the knowledge that Jane had taken her place, regardless of the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about her and she all but shouted at him as he turned back to face her, “That night you called me, in the middle of the fucking night! She was  _in bed_  with you, I heard her voice, all sleepy and sexy next to you.”   
  
When he smiled, she thought she might not be able to stop herself from clawing at his face, but his words humbled her quickly. “You’re kidding right? You’re jealous because maybe I slept with Jane? You have no proof, you just jumped to some crazy conclusions, after you made it clear you don’t want to sleep with me anymore?” He suddenly moved so he stood over her and she flinched away both from the truth she wanted to tell him, that she had never wanted it to stop, and the fact that she was pushing him to anger that had no bounds. “I called you in the middle of the night because I wanted to hear your voice, and I wasn’t in bed with Jane, I was in the living room and she’d fallen asleep watching TV.  _Next to me on the couch!_  Oh, I know, I said something stupid about not wanting to get up and go get the book, but Sara, come on. I’m like the guy who pulls the girl’s hair because he likes her. That’s why I called that night. I thought maybe I’d find a way to tell you I was sorry, but even if you can forgive me for those horrible things I said, I have to just let it go. I’ve figured it out, finally, that no matter what, I’ve just got to let it go. Let you go.”   
  
Sara’s eyes pricked with tears as he turned from her to turn the stereo down. All this time she had believed any remnants he felt for her were strictly of a physical nature, and because that’s where their relationship had started, it was in fact tied up in that a lot. But just as she had come to understand that she missed the presence of Lincoln, and the smile of Lincoln, and the laughter of Lincoln, she realized he missed the same things about her. Of course they still wanted each other, but instead of that being all they wanted, it was just a part of what they desired. Of what Sara had come to fear she needed. She needed it too much.   
  
“Remember when I told you I get cold when I get scared?” she asked softly, waiting for him to acknowledge her. He didn’t move from the CD player, but he turned his head and nodded at her. “When I’m sad, I get mean. Just ignore everything I’ve said. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, and you don’t owe me anything. And whatever you have to do to be happy with Jane, Lincoln, I truly hope you’re doing it.” She wasn’t lying exactly. In her heart, in the place where the right things were the things she wanted to do, she knew that Lincoln finding happiness with Jane was the only flip-side of the coin to her finding happiness with Michael. If he could do it, then so could she.   
  
Perhaps. Hopefully.   
  
“What the hell are you talking about?” he snapped, turning back to her and flinging his hand up dismissively. “I’m not with Jane,” he uttered, stomping back towards the couch.   
  
“You’re moving to California with her,” Sara pointed out. How could he not understand that she had to hear it, hear him say it, know it not because Jane had said so, but because Lincoln was making it happen. “I saw her at the grocery store and she told me you’re all moving out there.”   
  
He shook his head briefly, looking at her with such disbelief, as though it were so ludicrous he wanted to smack her. “We _are_  moving out there, but not together-together. Jane is from there, and she’s wanted to go back for a long time. LJ decided he wanted to go to school there, as you know, and instead of fighting with him about it, I just decided to go with him. It’s easier that way, all around.” When his voice softened and his expression changed, she knew he didn’t just mean that it was easier than fighting with LJ; he meant it would be easier for them, if they were so far apart. Her heart clenched suddenly, for both of them; for Michael. The mess that it was stung at her conscience and made her heart bleed.   
  
“Oh Lincoln,” she choked as tears started from her eyes again. She dropped his gaze by lowering her head into her hands miserably. “How did this become this? How did  _I_  become this? I can never decide if I hate myself because of what we did, or because I still want to do it, or because Michael is this impossibility that I cannot escape and just when I’ve talked myself into knowing I can’t be with him, something else happens that makes me need it so much.”   
  
She started in surprise when he pulled her back into his arms and she felt the sofa dip under his weight. “We’re almost there, now, Sara. Soon enough, he’ll be here with you and you’ll have it the way it should’ve always been. Then this will stop for you and you’ll be fine. You’ll wonder why you ever even wandered off the path because it’s so right for you.”   
  
Sara shook her head, knowing exactly why she had  _wandered off the path_. She hadn’t understood initially, but now she knew and there was no escaping that knowledge. She wanted to tell him, but she didn’t think either of them could take it right now, not with all they had put each other through in the last 20 minutes. Wrapping her arms around him, she breathed into his shoulder, “Stay with me.” Pressing her fingers into the muscles of his back, she tried to tell him with her body just what her mind was wrapping around the longer he stayed near her. “Just stay with me. Tonight, I don’t want to choose, Lincoln. Tonight, I just want you.” The biggest lie she’d ever told slipped from between her lips so easily, a desperate, wanton attempt to have him one last time, because she knew it was her very last chance.   
  
His body stiffened against hers, and the note of pleading in his voice told her everything she needed to know, even though his words conveyed it to the point of piercing her heart. “I’ll hold you while Glen Campbell sings, Sara.” His head dipped and his lips brushed her ear. “But I won’t make love to you. I won’t— _I can’t_ —do that just to walk away.”   
  
Because she had known he could give no other answer, she nodded her understanding, but a shaft of happiness shot through her when he pulled her with him as he leaned back on the couch, settling her head against his chest. “I forgave you a long time ago,” she heard herself whisper. “It’s me I can’t forgive, Lincoln. I’ve made such a mess of everything.”   
  
His hand swept the length of her back in the most basic form of human compassion she had ever felt. “That’s not true. It just seems like a mess. Once Michael’s here it will all clear up. You’ll see.” Then his hand combed through her hair and she pressed her face more firmly against his chest. She knew when she woke in the morning he would be gone, but he would stay as long as she was awake. She fought against the exhaustion in her bones for hours before finally succumbing.   
  


  
  
When Sara awoke, she didn’t feel rested at all, but she was on her bed, obviously having been carried there and placed in the center of it. The afghan from the foot of the bed had been spread over her, and the tears started instantly as she imagined Lincoln gently placing his lips against her forehead before he left. Before he left for the last time.   
  
She struggled to her feet, dragging herself towards the bathroom. She could work today, even though Casey, the medical director at the clinic had told her if she needed a few personal days to deal with the anniversary of her father’s death, he could take care of things. Sara knew work would be better than sitting at home and dwelling on all the things she couldn’t change, all the things she was no longer sure that she wanted to change. So she showered and put her make-up on like it was any other day and she walked out into the kitchen to pour herself a bowl of Special K. She went through all the motions of living a normal life, despite the fact that she was waiting for a man to get out of jail and she’d spent a good deal of the night in his brother’s arms.   
  
Ritual and routine seemed like it might save her, had she not gotten to her purse, which she had left on the coffee table the day before. If she hadn’t had to grab that bag to leave her apartment, to find her keys so she could start her car to drive herself 16 blocks to the clinic, if she hadn’t had to pick it up and see the note he’d left under the base of it, she probably would have gotten through one more day without totally breaking.   
  
But it was not meant to be. Because his distinctively scrawled letters jumped up into her eyes and carved her heart right out of her chest.   
  


_‘And I need you, more than want you, and I want you for all time,’_  
but because I love you, Sara, I would never make you choose.  
You chose a long time ago, and all I did was try to fuck it up for you.   
Never again. The next time I see you, it will be the way it should have   
always been. I know that. You know it, too.   


  
He hadn’t signed it, but he didn’t need to. And she didn’t need him to say it, but he had. She shouldn’t tell Michael, but she needed to.   
  


  
  
From the moment he crossed through the cage door into the visiting area, Sara steeled herself. There was no disguising her facial expression anyway, even if she could muster the energy to care. She was beyond that now.   
  
When he sat down with her at the small table they always used, his fingers wrapped around her wrists immediately. “You lied to Linc, didn’t you? Dammit, Sara, I sent him over there to help you. You have got to start letting people help you.” She didn’t expect a lecture, and she studied his face for a moment in shock. When she didn’t respond right away he continued, “I talked to Linc this morning, and he said you were doing all right. You had cried a bit and he thought you were feeling better by the time he left. Who should I believe lied? You to him last night, or him to me this morning?”   
  
Sara could have laughed at the irony except she couldn’t seem to make her voice box function. She just stared mutely at him, wondering how he would react if she just blurted out  _I’m in love with your brother, and he’s in love with me. We’re both the biggest fucking liars ever. How about that, Michael?_    
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice dropping an octave as he scooted as close to her on the plastic bench as they were allowed. His fingers squeezed her hands comfortingly and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sara, I was just trying to help somehow…but it’s bad enough being so powerless here, and now it’s like you reject the little bit of help I send your way.”   
  
She couldn’t tell him everything, but she had to do something, fast, quick, painful. Dragging one of her hands free of his, she put her fingers against his mouth to make sure he didn’t try to say anything else. “Michael, I’m in love with someone else. I’m not here because of my father, or because your brother helped or didn’t help me last night. I’m here because I’ve been pretending to myself, and to you, that when you get of here we’re going…” She drew her hand away, but his snatched it back into his grasp, metaphorically catching her like he always did.   
  
“No, you haven’t. When I get out of here, we’re going to be friends, that’s all. I know that, Sara. And I already know you’re in love with someone.”   
  
“How can you know that?” she asked, tears stinging her eyes. Why could she never get ahead of it?   
  
“Because when you came in here, what a year ago almost, and told me about the guy you’d been seeing. I knew then you were in love with him. I’ll admit I was hoping you’d be over it by now. Did you…” he hesitated, dropping her gaze for a split second. “Did you get back together?”   
  
“No, nothing like that. I just…” she faltered, looking at him, really looking at him, as if for the first time. “What are you expecting from this? From me coming here every week?” He shrugged, dropping her gaze again, and Sara yanked her hands back from him. “You tell the truth! Don’t accuse me of lying, and then do it yourself. What do you want from me, Michael?”   
  
“I want a chance! I want a chance to compete with him. Look, I know our relationship started out terribly, but from where I’m sitting, all your relationships start that way. I want a chance to prove that I can make you happy, that I can be good for you. If we had met under normal circumstances—“   
  
“You don’t know that,” Sara interrupted, suddenly feeling very judged. “You don’t know that if we met ‘under normal circumstances,’ we’d be fine. And who are you to judge healthy relationships? You went to prison to break your brother out. Ever hear the term co-dependent?”   
  
“Whoa,” he said, raising his hands as though she had leveled a gun at him. “Let’s not compare my relationship with my brother, my  _only_  living relative to yours with a guy who broke your heart, not once, but twice, and sent you to crying on _my_  shoulder,  _not once, but twice_. It’s hardly the same. And besides all that, if you didn’t wonder, if you didn’t want to find out if I’m right about us, why do you keep coming here? Why do you keep visiting me? You could have walked out a thousand times and never come back and what could I do? Not much. Sic Linc on you, maybe, but even he would only do so much before he’d tell me to move on. He’s not one for sticking around in a situation that doesn’t work, and he doesn’t think I should waste my time either.”   
  
“Is that what he said? Does he think you’re wasting your time on me?” Sara demanded hotly.   
  
“What? No.” Michael shook his head and put one hand out tentatively on her knee. “I’m saying if you ever gave me the cold shoulder and I tried to get him to run interference for me—never mind! Sara, all I’m saying is you want to know what I want from you, and I just told you, the truth, nothing held back behind the understanding-friend cloak, whatever. What do you want from me? Why do you keep coming back here?”   
  
Trembling invaded her every limb and she twisted away from him, her legs jumping up and down as she arched her feet. “I don’t know. I don’t know! I don’t even know why I came here today. What did I think I would accomplish? You don’t have any choices right now. I look as good as anything from where you stand.”   
  
“Sara,” he said and he tried to grab her arm again, but she scooted away from him and shook her head. “Sara, look. I’m not delusional. I know a lot of people would argue that considering what I’ve done, and I’ve been to therapy, and I know I’m fucked up—to a certain extent. But I’m functional, and I know what I want, and whether it’s today that you accept it or five months from now when I walk out of here, I’m coming after you. I want my chance. And maybe in the”–he used his fingers as quote marks–“real world, it will all become glaringly clear, I don’t know. But don’t come here and try to make your issues mine.”  
  
“Don’t you see, though, Michael,” she tried one last time, “that if you try to take this on in November, that’s when my issues become your issues. Everything I carry with me, you’ll have to be willing to shoulder it too, or, at the very least, help me dig through it. Are you willing to do that? Are you?” She silently begged him to answer that question in a way that would make her decision obvious.  
  
“You left a door open for me once,” he said softly, his gaze slowly drifting from her hands (which twisted restlessly in her lap), up, up, up inch by inch until it touched her eyes. “You have to be willing to do it again. Just like then, I’ll do the rest.”  



	13. Does the World End With a Whisper?

“It’s beautiful here, Mike. It’s what I imagined Panama would be like, but not as hot.”   
  
“How far are you from Irvine?” Michael asked.   
  
“Without traffic, only 20 minutes, but there’s always traffic, so, you know. It’s just like Chicago. But it’s beautiful. The house is all windows, there’s so much light, I could get a tan inside the house. But the beach is fuckin’ amazing!” Michael chuckled in Lincoln’s ear and Lincoln pressed the phone harder to his head. “It’s only a few more weeks, Mike. You’ll be out, and then you have to come for Christmas, and we’ll have you, me and LJ together again for the first time in...too fuckin’ long.”   
  
“With Jane and hopefully Sara. Let’s not forget the women.”   
  
“I haven’t forgotten, not at all. Have you asked Sara about coming out?”   
  
“Not yet. I figured that could wait. She’s still slightly standoffish, you know. She thinks I’ve just imagined that it will be great when we’re together, so she’s trying not to encourage me.”   
  
“But she still comes around, every week, right?” Lincoln asked.   
  
“Lately it’s been a couple of times a week. And she’s doing better. She looks better.”   
  
Lincoln stood in his beautiful kitchen, in the new beach house he and LJ had just moved into that week and stared at the calendar that hung on the wall. The month proclaimed it was October and as he looked at the ocean scene photograph that looked so much like his view out the window he believed she would be looking better. It had, after all, been three months since he’d seen her, and she was bound to be improving without him around. “Good to hear, good to hear,” he muttered. Then, forcing himself to lighter notes, he said, “Okay, well, there’s a room here that’s all yours, if you come out here and fall in love with California, I mean.”  
  
“That will depend, of course, on Sara. You know I’d love to be where you are, Linc, but…”  
  
“I know, I know. But seriously, Michael, when Sara sees this place, she’s gonna love it too.”  
  
“Wouldn’t you ever want to come back to Chicago?” Michael asked.  
  
Turning, Lincoln leaned a hip against the counter and shrugged for no one’s benefit. “I don’t know. It’s home, for sure, but this feels real, here, now. Like the beginning of a whole new life.”  
  
“Okay, okay,” Michael said, and Lincoln realized he was talking to someone on his end of the phone. “Linc, I gotta go. There’s somebody else who wants to use the phone, and I’ve already been on here a while. Just one sec,” he said again and Lincoln heard someone in the background agree to that. “Linc, we’ll be fine, you and me, even if we don’t live near each other. I’d rather we would, but if that doesn’t work out, it doesn’t matter. Right? I mean, we’re brothers, and nothing can change that.”  
  
Lincoln’s eyes burned along with the lining of his stomach. Sometimes he was sure he had an ulcer. “You bet, Mikey. Distance can’t change anything.”  
  
“Good. I’ll call you when I get home.” There was a pause. “I love you, Linc.”  
  
“I love you, too, Michael,” Lincoln said, abruptly hanging up when he felt a sob thunder through his throat.  
  
Tossing the portable phone onto the counter, Lincoln made his way into the living room and threw himself down on the sofa. Michael had exactly 17 days left at Statesville, and when he got out he was going to take up residence in the apartment Lincoln and LJ had lived in when they were still in Chicago. It had seemed pointless to let it go when it would make the transition easier for Michael. It would take a while for him to find someone willing to hire an infamous ex-con, but if he had a place to live, one that was already furnished and had all the things Michael would need, it would make it somewhat less stressful. And as Lincoln had discovered, there was no end to Aldo’s money. He may not have given his sons much while he was alive, but his death had secured their material needs for the rest of their lives.  
  
Lincoln had lately found that attending college classes did odd things to him. It made him thirsty for knowledge. He adored learning, and with a full load, it took up a great deal of his time. When he wasn’t actually in class, or doing homework, he found he didn’t have a lot of extra time to worry about things that were already decided.  
  
Except right before he fell asleep at night, or times like now, when he had just talked to Michael. He wanted desperately to believe it could all work out, that even if Michael and Sara moved out to California to be near them, that it would settle into the way it should be. Or rather, the way he saw it in his head, he wanted that to connect with his heart. And he never wanted Michael to know what he had done or what he was still doing. Loving the woman who belonged to his brother.  
  
Because, just as with Veronica, once he had tipped the edge and ventured into the area of loving of Sara, it was something he didn’t think would ever end. And he had loved Veronica since he was 19 years old. That did not bode well when he considered marriage and babies and the rest of his life as Michael’s brother. He had the serious problem of not being able to get something out of his heart once it was there.  
  
So he said all the right things about wanting his brother to move out to California, but in his heart, he hoped Sara would do the smart thing and keep them both in Chicago. He’d told her how he felt for a two reasons. One was that he wanted her to know it just once, and the other was so she could make decisions based on that knowledge. He could only hope that the decisions she made from here on out worked out best for all of them.  
  
“Dad? You home?” LJ called as he came in the front door.  
  
“In here,” he shouted back.  
  
LJ appeared around the corner from the hall, his backpack still on his back. “I know I just drove home through all that traffic, but let’s go get In-n-Out.”  
  
Lincoln smiled, immense gratitude welling up for his son. Life went on for him, with a normalcy that helped keep his father centered. “You driving, or me?” he asked, getting to his feet.  
  


  
  
As Christmas drew closer, Michael’s phone calls grew more rare. Two weeks before the holiday, he called to tell Lincoln that they were in fact coming, which caused Lincoln to be torn between relief that things were going well between them and colossal pain over the whole thing. Jane had been over when the call came, but LJ had yet to return from his late class. “What were you expecting?” she demanded when his pallor waned with the hanging up of the phone.  
  
Not wanting to argue with her, yet again, over how stupid a situation it was, Lincoln had gone to the bathroom and stayed there until LJ got home. He and Jane had had many a fight over the whole thing, because in her opinion, having Sara and Michael come for Christmas was like “inviting a nuclear holocaust.”  
  
Lincoln thought she was being slightly dramatic. _Slightly_.  
  
But what else could he do? He had to go on, and the best way to do that was face head on just what he’d suspected all along: all Sara really needed in her life to set things right was his brother. On the one hand he’d always known it was true, so it didn’t come as a surprise; on the other hand he hated that he could have his life so irrevocably twisted by a woman who had apparently climbed into bed with him one night just to fight the loneliness that seeped from both of them. Only Sara was lonely no more, and Lincoln couldn’t bring himself to turn to Jane or anyone else for comfort.  
  
Not that Jane would give him the time of day, because he got the feeling she egged him on in the hopes that he would go back and fight for Sara. She hadn’t said it, but there was something about her disdain for the whole thing that had changed from thinking he ought to be ashamed of betraying his brother to an understanding that whatever it had started out as it was now something much more serious than Lincoln (or anyone) could have ever guessed. But she would never come out and say that, and he would never do that anyway. Sara was Michael’s. Had been before, had been the whole intermediary time, and now that it was over, still belonged somewhere else, far away from Lincoln.  
  
December 22 arrived with sunshine and a soft breeze, and Lincoln drove with his window down all the way to LAX to meet their flight. LJ and Jane both didn’t accompany him, but Lincoln thought that was better anyway, because they would watch him too closely and that could make Michael suspicious. He had an hour and a half drive to prepare himself, and then he’d have at least that long back in the car with them to adjust to them being… _them_. And by the time they got back to the house, he would be fine. Or at least he would be able to appear fine, and Jane and LJ would both have the decency not to ask him if he was okay in front of their guests.  
  
Guests? It was Michael, for fuck’s sake. Who did he know better in the whole world than his brother? His brother would never be a guest to him. Just as, he suspected, Sara would never be a guest to him. There were four people left in the world that he loved following the unraveling of the biggest conspiracy the U.S. had ever known. And they were the four people he was spending Christmas with in whatever bizarre fashion it appeared. That really summed it up. He might wish Sara could be in his life in some different capacity, but he most definitely wanted her in his life, so he had to take what he could get, right?  
  
He got to LAX about ten minutes after their flight should have landed, which still gave him plenty of time to get near the gate and wait for them to walk through. He didn’t start to get worried until he’d been there for almost an hour, and he finally approached one of the workers at the gate and asked if all the passengers from American Flight 445 had exited the plane. “Oh, yeah,” the guy said, looking at his watch. “The flight from Chicago? It landed over an hour ago. For sure they’ve disembarked by now.”  
  
After a few more questions, the worker went to inquire if a Michael Scofield or a Sara Tancredi had even boarded the plane, and when he came back a several long minutes later he informed Lincoln, “Nope, neither of them got on the plane. Sorry.”  
  
Lincoln pulled his cell phone out as he walked back out to his car. Jane answered the house phone. “Have Michael or Sara called there with a change of plans?” he demanded. It was then that he noticed his heart was pounding, and sweat and started down the center of his back and under his arms.  
  
“No, I haven’t heard from them,” Jane said, and he could hear the puzzlement in her voice. “Besides, you know I would call you and let you—“  
  
“Fine, I’ll call Michael,” he snapped, disconnecting their call. Pushing the #2 for Michael’s cell phone, he waited. When his brother’s voice mail picked up, he left an uncertain message, “Hey, Mike, it’s me. I’m at the airport, but you’re not here, and I haven’t heard from you, and so I’m a little…uh, you know, worried. Call me.”  
  
Disconnecting that call, he actually stared at the phone for a full five minutes before calling Sara. As if his stomach was his sixth sense, it started to burn and he could feel the bile at the back of his throat. He dialed her house phone, because it wasn’t in his cell phone anymore (see, he had gotten that far), but he still had it memorized (all right, not  _that_  far). Her breathless “Michael?” into the phone told him she hadn’t even looked at the caller I.D.  
  
“It’s Linc, Sara,” he said, leaning his head on the steering wheel. He silently prayed,  _No God, No God, No God_.  
  
“Oh, God, Lincoln, have you talked to Michael?” Her voice held a wealth of emotion, and none of it helped Lincoln’s stomach.  
  
“No, I haven’t. I just tried to call him, but I got his voicemail. Where the hell is he?”  
  
“I don’t know. We…we had this huge fight yesterday, and he left. He’s gone. I tried him at his apartment, I even sat outside it all night, but he never showed up. I don’t know where he went. I hoped maybe he went to California without me, but obviously—“  
  
When Lincoln realized she wasn’t going to stop talking, perhaps ever, he interrupted. “What did you fight about?” That shut her up, maybe permanently, because dead silence bounced back at him and his eyes closed and his jaw clenched and his stomach heaved. “Sara?”  _Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it_. “What did you fight about?”  
  
A sob met his ears first and then her words, garbled though they were, made it through the phone. “He knows.”  
  
Lincoln hung the phone up, because he couldn’t say any of the things that flashed through his head. Instead he pocketed the phone, climbed out of his car, and walked right back into the airport. He stood in a short line at the American Airlines desk and then he pulled out a credit card when it was finally his turn. When the cute blonde girl whose fingers had already been flying over her keyboard for the previous customer looked up at him, Lincoln said, “I need to be on the earliest flight to Chicago I can get.”  



	14. I Want You

Ten days before Michael was to be released from prison, Sara visited him one last time. He asked her then not to come again, and not to come pick him up. He had made other arrangements, he said, and he wanted to do some things alone that day. So she offered to cook him dinner, his first night as a free man. It was the least she could do, she figured.   
  
He had come to her house, dressed in gray Dockers and a long-sleeved, v-neck ribbed sweater that was a gray-blue color. It made his eyes look even more beautiful than prison blue had, and her heart had fluttered. Ushering him into the house, she had stood for a moment with her forehead pressed against the door.  _It could be_. It could be, she thought, a rush of happiness flooding her.   
  
They stayed up late talking about a plethora of subjects, and when they were both yawning so often that the conversation became interrupted too much, he smiled sheepishly and went home.   
  
Four days later they went on a real date, which consisted of an Italian restaurant and the latest Bond film. Sara felt very normal as they sat in the theater together, and when he snagged her hand in his, she felt the flutter again. It was a throw back to high school, but the thrill was almost more than she could convey in a smile just as their eyes met and the lights went down. So they held hands through the movie, and on the short walk to the car. Then he’d dropped her at her house with a warm hug goodnight.   
  
Three weeks after he got of out of Statesville, she made Thanksgiving dinner for them. He called Lincoln and they spent some time watching football together over the phone and she just laughed and shook her head when he proffered her the phone to say hello. “I’ve got all those dishes to wash,” she said, getting up and heading back to the kitchen.   
  
A few moments later, he slid his arms around her waist and nuzzled her hair away from her neck. “I should do the clean up,” he murmured. “You did all the cooking.”   
  
“It wasn’t that much. Thanksgiving dinner for two is nothing.” Leaning back into him, she was pleasantly surprised by the warmth of him all along her back. It felt wonderful and her body fit against his nicely.   
  
“All the same,” came his voice from the depths of her neck, “I should do the clean up.”   
  
Sara pulled her head back slightly so he raised his and she could look into his eyes. She intended to argue with him, but his lips captured hers, and he kissed her for the first time since the Infirmary.   
  
That kiss, the one in the Infirmary, had been hot and gentle, somewhat exploratory. This one was hot for sure, but demanding, and almost as soon as his lips were on hers, his tongue had plunged into her mouth. His hands turned her to face him, his fingers splaying against the small of her back to pull her tightly to his chest. Sara felt swamped with heat at first and her body went slack in his arms, her curves conforming quite eagerly to the planes of his chest and stomach. Twining her arms around his neck, she didn’t just hang there with her mouth open, but started kissing him in return. Almost as soon as she began participating, the heat she’d felt faded and she was filled with an uneasiness so great she stiffened against him.   
  
Whether Michael thought he could soldier through it, or he just didn’t notice immediately due to his own enthusiasm, it took Sara a moment to extricate herself and shove him away. “Michael, Michael…stop!” Her arms were between them now and he stepped back, looking a little dazed and confused.   
  
His eyes focused on her face, and then he took another step back. “I’m sorry,” he said, his cheeks reddening right before her eyes. “I—just, um, it’s been a long ti—“   
  
“You don’t have to explain it,” Sara said hurriedly, turning back to the sink. She put her hands down on the counter, steadying herself. “I’m sorry, you just took me by surprise, and I—um, uh, I—“   
  
She felt one long finger touch her shoulder. “You don’t have to explain, either, Sara. That was too much, too fast, and I’m sorry.”   
  
Sara shook her head, but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure if it was too much too fast or if was just not right altogether. She had been feeling so comfortable with him, and the cocoon of acceptance and support she had wrapped herself in was all Michael. There wasn’t anything else to it.   
  
She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d thought about Lincoln. Really. It didn’t count when she thought about him because Michael brought him up or mentioned he had talked to him. Or that he had just tried to get her to talk to his brother on the phone. What would she say?  _Hey, Lincoln, how are you? Yes, I’m fine. I’m totally over you, are you over me?_    
  
Lies were most ineffective when they were only in your head. “Hey,” Michael’s voice penetrated her thoughts, reassurance in his tone now as opposed to the arousal she’d heard the moment before. As usual, taking care of her was his number one priority, over any of his own needs. “It’s all right,” he said softly, tugging her into a side hug. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and squeezed her. “Please, don’t worry about it, Sara. We’re building something here. I’m a patient man.”   
  
Sara didn’t know what it was about his words that caused her mind to jump to a vast montage of memories of Lincoln and his own version of patience, which had nothing to do with not kissing her or touching her, but instead focused on kissing her until she was out of her mind with passion and touching her until she begged him to touch her harder, or to join their bodies, or to  _please, stop teasing me, you jerk!_  as she panted beneath him, dewy with sweat.   
  
Shaking her head, as if that might physically dislodge those wayward thoughts, she moved away from Michael and forced a smile to her face. “I appreciate that,” she said. Reaching out she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and squeezed. “I’m just not ready,” she said, the explanation both unnecessary and important. She didn’t know if she’d ever be ready, but she definitely wasn’t going to be as ready as Michael was any time soon, and it was vital he understand that.   
  
“I know,” he said, his eyes serious. “I know.”   
  


  
  
The night she agreed to go with him to California for Christmas, they made out for the first time. There were many things about their relationship that reminded her of high school, and a necking session on her sofa brought it home even more. The truth of the situation was he liked her more than she liked him, but she liked him enough to keep seeing him. And as long as he kept his hands on her back or in her hair or on her face, she could kiss him deeply and passionately.   
  
Over those two weeks between her acceptance and when they were supposed to leave, she sent him home more nights than not, completely frustrated. He took it as far as she let him, and even muttered under his breath in the middle of a heated moment that he “hadn’t done shit like this since college.” She didn’t tell him that it had been longer for her, because she had never been the kind of girl a guy had to talk into bed. She was either for it or against it, and they usually knew right up front where they stood.   
  
For herself in this situation, she usually took a cool shower, went to bed and when she finally managed to sleep, she dreamed terrible, disjointed dreams about the brothers. Sometimes she and Lincoln were making love, sometimes they were just fighting, but always the dream ended with Michael finding them together and demanding to know what was going on. In the first dream, it was obvious, but in the second it was less so, but she never saw how they handled it, because she always awoke before that could happen.   
  
The day before they were supposed to fly to California, they were eating dinner at his apartment—Lincoln’s apartment—and her discomfort had reached an all time high. She broached the subject by saying, “I’ve been rethinking this whole Christmas thing, Michael.”   
  
He was putting dishes in the dishwasher, but he paused to look at her. “What about it?” he asked.   
  
“Don’t you think your first Christmas out should be with your family?” she asked, walking over to the sink with her plate in her hand.   
  
Pulling it from her grasp, he said, “I will be with my family.” His brow puckered as he looked at her, like he wasn’t too sure of her brain power suddenly.   
  
“I mean,  _just_  your family.”   
  
“If you don’t want to go, just say so, Sara,” he said, the confusion evaporating from his face in a split second to be replaced with irritation. He turned back to the sink and rinsed the plate before sticking it in the dishwasher.   
  
“I want to go,” she said too quickly, and she knew they both knew in that instant it was a lie. But why she told the lie, only Sara truly knew. “I just don’t want to horn in on your time with Lincoln and LJ.”   
  
Shutting the door on the appliance, he faced her fully. “Last time I checked, Lincoln and LJ love you, and you would not be horning in on any time I spend with them. They want you to come. Hell, Lincoln wants us to move there; if he’s told me once, he’s told me a dozen times there’s a room for us out there.”   
  
“Lincoln wants us to move to California?” Sara questioned, completely nonplussed.   
  
“Of course, he does. He loves it there, but he wants us to be together, and he knows I want to be with you, so you are a part of that.”   
  
“So Lincoln never said, ‘Michael, I want you and Sara to move out here. Live in my house with me. Share toothpaste.’ That sort of thing?”   
  
Michael studied her for a moment and then folded his arms over his chest in a slow, calculating matter. “Is there some reason you think Lincoln doesn’t like you? He adores you. Besides that you helped him get into college, which he never dreamed he could do in a million years, you saved our lives, a few different times. And…” he paused, reaching out to pull her in to his arms. “Linc and I never fight over women. I’ve never brought a girl home he didn’t like, or vice versa. We aren’t like that. Pretty much if one of us loves something, the other one is okay with it.”   
  
She jerked herself out of his arms. “Don’t say you love me, Michael. You can’t possibly.”   
  
“Whoa!” he exclaimed as she flailed across the kitchen, tripping first over his feet and then her own. When she steadied herself against the kitchen table, her eyes ventured back to him. “Even though you are—whatever you are, I can be certain of whatever I want to be. I’m not saying ‘I love you,’ I only meant in general terms Lincoln and I love the same things. And by that I was trying to reassure you that he wants you to come for Christmas. You know what I’d really like? I’d like for you to just relax. Quit trying to find something wrong with every step we take. This is fine. We are fine. We’re moving slowly, enough, aren’t we?”   
  
Sara shook her head. “I don’t know, Michael.”   
  
“Okay, look. I’m done with begging for this. If you don’t want to go, don’t go. I’ll call Linc, and I’ll tell him I’m coming without you.”   
  
“No!” she cried, and then she bit her lip when he just stared at her.   
  
“What?” he snapped. “What is it? You know I had this crazy idea I could make you happy, but I know now that I can’t. Only you can make you happy, Sara. Obviously nothing I do will ever be enough. You don’t want to go? Or you do? You want to see me every day and tie me up in knots, but you don’t want me to love you? What do you want from me? If driving me crazy is the goal, I’m well on my way back to JCAT.”   
  
It took everything inside Sara not to break at those words. She knew she had turned into every girl she ever hated, the kind boys labeled  _teases_  when she was in high school. All she knew was if he called Lincoln, Lincoln would no doubt call her and demand to know what the hell was going on. He wanted her to come to California and show him that she was living happily ever after with his brother.   
  
Michael rubbed his temples and moved past her into the living room. She followed him, but stopped when he went down the hall towards the bathroom. Disappearing for a moment, he returned empty handed. “Do you have any Ibuprofen?” he asked. “My head is killing me.”   
  
“Okay, I get it, Michael, I’m driving you crazy.”   
  
He paused in his trek across the living room and just looked at her. “I don’t have any pain killer in the house. I’m asking if you do?”   
  
She turned and walked back into the kitchen. “You probably just need a drink of water. That’s usually what cures a headache.”   
  
“I’m not thirsty,” he called heatedly. “It’s a tension headache, trust me. I’ve had them for two  _fucking_  weeks, you know while we haven’t been! You’ve got some right here in your bag, I’m just going to borro–“   
  
Sara heard the sound of him picking up her shoulder bag because she always looped her keys on the outside strap and it jangled as he searched for some pain reliever. She found herself running before she could stop herself and she knew it was too late as she stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “Michael...”   
  
He stood looking down, the bag in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. He stared at it for the longest time, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was memorizing the words written on it. She knew it was stupid and pointless to hope he wouldn’t know what it was, and even more stupid and pointless to think he wouldn’t recognize his own brother’s handwriting. His gaze slowly moved up towards her, but then it dropped back to the piece of paper, and as if he couldn’t not look at it, he raised his arm, too. Dropping her bag with a loud thud, he demanded, “You keep a love letter from him in your purse?”   
  
She had no words, so she didn’t even try to say anything.   
  
“You keep a love letter from him in your purse?” he said again, much more loudly. “What the hell are you doing here with me, Sara?” She looked away from him and in two long strides he stood in front of her and gripped her chin painfully in his empty hand. “Answer me!”   
  
“You wanted a chance. You said you wanted a chance. I told you I loved him. I told you that I was in love with someone else. But you said you wanted a chance.”   
  
“Tell me the truth!” he shouted.   
  
“I am!” she cried, tears splashing down her face.   
  
His fingers clenched hard on her jaw. “You’re here with me because of him. Because he said – what?” He jerked the paper closer to both their faces. “Oh, right. He’s not going to make you choose. Only he did, didn’t he. He made you choose,  _didn’t he_?”   
  
She ineffectively tried to shake her head but said nothing, flinching away from him because he had screamed the words at her. She couldn’t get far from him because his fingers were wrapped around her chin and splayed against her jawbone. He was hurting her, but she couldn’t say anything about her own pain because she knew had just shattered his heart. Frantically, her thoughts moved to all the things she could have done differently from the first moment she met Michael Scofield and the wild idea that she would do absolutely anything to take them out of this moment screeched to a stop behind her eyes. She knew of all the lies she had told, of all the truths she had avoided, she could tell no more, and avoid nothing else. She loved Lincoln. She needed Lincoln. She  _wanted_  Lincoln. No amount of time spent with Michael would ever change it—no amount of wanting to want Michael instead would change things. “You wanted a chance,” she sniffed. “I should never have–“   
  
“I don’t want to compete with my brother!” he bellowed, shoving her away with cruel fingers. “It’s one thing to come to me and tell me you love some bastard who broke your heart, and look at me like you want me to fix it. The bastard’s  _my brother_? And he loves you? What do I do with that?” He shook the note Lincoln left under her purse the last time she’d seen him in front of her face viciously. “And you love him? Oh...” he flung the piece of paper from his hand as though it suddenly burned his fingers. “My God. Holy...” He rubbed his hands over the top of his head agitatedly and heaved out a heavy sigh before turning away from her. “This isn’t real. This is a fucking nightmare,” he breathed, his chin dropping to his chest.   
  
Sara huddled against the wall, though she wanted to pick up the paper with Lincoln’s final words to her. She wanted to hold it physically because she had been clutching the words to her heart all this time, thinking she could make it true. Lincoln’s presence permeated the room, both from Michael’s words and her own memories. She remembered dinners with him and LJ, and hours of studying, and moments of laughter when they watched television or did nothing but sit there while LJ played with Jasmine and the cat toys she loved to chase. They didn’t do anything special; in fact, it couldn’t have been more mundane. But she had loved every moment of it because they had been together. And now she ached because they were so far apart, forever, and because Michael knew. And he would never forgive either of them. “It was all me,” she said suddenly. “I started it. I was the one who started it. Don’t be mad at Lincoln. He loves you, Michael. He would never do anything to hurt you. It was me. It was all me.”   
  
His eyes moved slowly to hers, as though the headache he’d complained of had slowed his reflexes down. “Right. He loves me and you don’t. I get it. I finally understand.” An unnatural calm had settled now, and Sara thought perhaps she was more frightened of that than of his out of control screaming from the moment before.  
  
“I was trying to make it right; to make it what it would have been if…”  
  
“If I hadn’t had to finish serving my time?” He laughed harshly. “I hardly think—“  
  
“You left me in New Mexico with him. You could have waited a few days, Michael, and taken me with you, and it would all be different now. But you had to go be the big hero, without either of us, and this is the result.”  
  
His eyes widened, and she could almost hear the  _pop!_  sound they should have made. It would have been comical, if he didn’t open his mouth and say, “This is my fault? Oh, that’s rich. Really. Two drug addicts fucking each other behind my back—one of which I know so well that this doesn’t surprise me all that much, but the other…I guess I should have known. I should have known you’d be just like him. That’s probably why I was attracted to you in the first place. Because I seem to like being waist-deep in shit.”  
  
Sara felt her temper spark, but she held on to her tongue. He deserved to say and think and feel whatever he wanted to at this moment, and she could hardly argue with him that it wasn’t like that. Initially, that was probably exactly what it had been, but it had grown into so much more, and if there was any chance he could ever see that they had tried to do the right thing, at some point, she had to let it go now. She had do as little as possible so as not to inflict more damage. She couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Don’t hate Lincoln. Hate me, fine, Michael. I’m nothing and nobody to you, but he’s your brother. And he loves you, and he left because of that love.”  
  
He laughed again, the sound far from joyful. “Quit defending him.  _I know Lincoln_. I know him. I know what he’s like and what he’s capable of, and some great sacrifice like this, this is right up his alley. He takes what he wants and leaves the rest. How fucking noble of him. I’m so lucky to have him for a brother.”  
  
“Michael…”  
  
“Shut up! Shut up! You don’t get to tell me how it was. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter who started it. Because you just finished it, Sara. I’ve got to…” he paced away from her towards the door, grabbing the car keys that sat in a bowl on a table by the front door.  
  
“Michael, don’t leave. This is your house. I’ll leave,” she said, scrambling to pick up Lincoln’s letter and her purse.  
  
He stood by the door, watching her. When she looked up at him the distaste on his face was enough to cause her to shrink back. “This is  _Lincoln’s_  apartment. Why don’t you stay here?” he asked venomously. “It’s where you want to be after all.”  
  


  
  
Sara did eventually leave Michael’s apartment to return to her own, but after Lincoln’s phone call, she had gone back, hoping that Michael had showed up, and just hadn’t contacted them. When she got there, she used the spare key she’d stolen when she’d left the day before and let herself in.   
  
There was no sign that Michael had been there since he’d stormed out the day before, and she checked the whole apartment, even feeling the towels in the bathroom for dampness. She had no idea where he’d gone and the longer he was unaccounted for the more worried she became. Lincoln was going to kill her for letting this happen, and if anything tragic occurred to Michael…oh, she couldn’t even contemplate it. How could she go on knowing she had done this to them? If she’d ever loved either of them, she would never have done what she did. Truth be told, she hadn’t loved them then. Now, she most assuredly did love them, but not in the ways either of them wanted to be loved.  
  
She hadn’t slept the night before, and the exhaustion finally caught up with her while she sat on the sofa waiting for Michael.  
  
She awoke much later, after it was dark outside, to the rattling of the door as a key turned in it. When she jumped unsteadily to her feet, she hoped Michael wouldn’t be able to tell she’d been resting. She wiped the sleep from her eyes hurriedly and re-twisted her hair up into a messy ponytail, but as she moved towards the door, it was Lincoln, and not his brother who came through it.  
  
Lincoln hollered, “Michael!” before he saw her and then jumped when his gaze landed on her. “Sara? Where is Michael? What are you doing here? Is he back?”  
  
Overwhelmed, Sara started bawling instantly and shook her head negatively. “No, I haven’t seen him since yesterday and I have no idea where—“  
  
The door slammed and in less than two seconds, she was in Lincoln’s arms, pulled tightly to his chest. “Baby, I’m so sorry—“ but Sara couldn’t hear him over her own broken sobs. She had cried a little during the confrontation with Michael, and following his departure, but only now did she fall completely to pieces.  
  
He rocked her and held her, his hands up and down the length of her back, while his whispers went unnoticed by her ears, but every single one of them touched her heart and made her wrap her own arms around him. She thought if she squeezed hard enough, maybe she could disappear inside him and not have to ever face what had happened.  
  
Finally, an undetermined amount of time later, her sobs subsided, and he started talking in sentences instead of in comforting noises. “I’m going to find him, and explain everything and make this right, Sara. You’ll have him back, and it will be fine. You’ll see.”  
  
Shoving herself out of his arms almost as quickly as she’d gotten there, she couldn’t decide whether to slap his face or just walk away. Swiping haphazardly at her tearstained face, she could only ask, “Are you serious? Can you hear yourself? Lincoln, wake up! We cannot make this right.”  
  
“Michael gets really mad, but then he calms down, Sara. You’ll see. He’ll calm down, and be reasonable and I can convince him that it was just a mistake, and that you want him, and that you can make all of this work.”  
  
“Lincoln! Shut up!  _No_. Just  _no_. It’s over. It’s finally over. It should have been over before it started, but I had to try, for your sake, for his sake, I don’t even know anymore. I think I was just nuts. Why else would I think I could do this? Why would I let you talk me into it? So fucking stupid.”  
  
His hand reached out and wrapped around her elbow, pulling her back so they were closer together. “Sara, we can, we'll do it, just—“  
  
“No!” she shouted with all of her strength. “No, we can’t. I don’t want to!” Raising her fists she pounded them against his chest, once, very hard. “Lincoln. I don’t want Michael! I don’t want him, and he knows it. I want you.  _You_. You are all I think about, all I want. You are the one I want to eat dinner with and go to the movies with and—“ her voice broke, but she forced herself to go on. “And m-make love with. And if I can’t have you, then I don’t want anyone else, but I especially don’t want to try to make believe with Michael. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.” She lost the momentum and sagged against him. “I can’t.  _I won’t_. It’s over.”  



	15. Can We Make This Something Good?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from "It's Not Over" by Daughtry.

In the dimness of the living room of his old apartment, Lincoln Burrows had the realization that had perhaps been hammering at his subconscious for quite some time; it never connected though, until Sara, literally falling apart in front of him, slammed her fists against his chest and declared that she wanted  _him_ , not his brother.   
  
It didn’t make sense, not really, because to Lincoln it was a no-brainer as to who was preferable between him and Michael. He didn’t equate being worthy with being preferable until just this moment. He didn’t feel worthy of Sara, he didn’t feel worthy of anything more than not being on death row any longer, and he owed it all to his brother, and now he had somehow managed to steal Michael’s girl too, and it all just snowballed in his head until he had to move away from her for a moment.   
  
Flipping on the overhead light to dispel the darkness, he looked at her as she wrapped her arms around her middle, hugging herself, he supposed, since he hadn’t. “Sara, I’m so sorry,” he began, but there were so many things to apologize for that he couldn’t even think where to start. He had made her do this, even though he had thought all along it was what she really wanted. He knew she had told him many times in many ways that she didn’t want it, but he had ignored that by telling himself once she spent time with Michael it would all come back. He remembered how she looked in the car when they picked her up to take her to the safe house in New Mexico. She had looked at Michael with a sort of uneasy longing, and now that he thought about it, his brother had never done anything to relieve it. Maybe he had wanted to, but he was so focused on the plan, and getting the evidence their father had told them about, he hadn’t taken the time.   
  
And so it had fallen to Lincoln.   
  
A year and a half had passed between that night and right now, and Sara had the same expression on her face. She needed Lincoln; she wanted Lincoln. The triumph in his soul was almost more than he could bear. He hadn’t set out to be that, to be what she needed and wanted, but somehow he had become it anyway. Despite his fear in seeing Michael, despite the knowledge that he deserved whatever Michael chose to do, cut him off, or hate him forever, or punish him with his snide ‘I don’t want to be the older brother to my older brother’ remarks, for just one small moment the joy that she loved him as he loved her coated his being, filling him up and making him wonder how something so enormous could be so intangible at the same moment. But it had to end with him acting just as Michael had. He could do nothing to permanently remove that need from her face.  
  
He closed the distance between them, scooped her face up into his big hands and said, “I love you, Sara. I love you, so much,” because he was sure it was the only chance he’d ever have to say the words. Her eyes blinked and tears trickled over her cheeks and the softest smile touched her lips, and before he could think about anything else, he kissed her. His mouth owned hers, again, for the briefest moment, because he thought surely he wouldn’t get another opportunity for this either. She gasped and sighed into his mouth and her tongue met his and the taste was so sweet, just as he remembered and he thought maybe right now, this was the moment of death, and it wasn’t so bad. If he had to go, wrapped up in Sara would be the best way.   
  
Her arms slid under his and moved up his back; they couldn’t go around his neck because his hands were in the way, cradling her face. He wanted to crush her to him, but he was so unbalanced right now, he knew if he drew her closer he would lose control. He’d already lost everything, he was certain of that, so not making love to this woman didn’t hold any weight anymore. He had come here to face Michael though, and he didn’t intend to face him naked after he’d just had his way with Sara.   
  
He ended the kiss slowly, disengaging his tongue first with a gentle swipe across her bottom lip as well as a little tug on it with his teeth. Pressing his lips firmly to hers with his mouth closed, he let them drift up, brushing light kisses over her cheeks and her closed eyes before touching her forehead softly too. She pushed closer, but he kept her back by keeping his hands around her face. He lifted his head to look down at her, running his fingers over her soft skin and gazing at her in the now lighted living room. It was then that he noticed the blue smudges on her cheeks and chin and he leaned in to look more closely at her skin. “What happened to your face?” he asked.   
  
Sara’s eyes blinked open and she looked at him blankly. “What?” she asked.   
  
“You’ve got these weird marks on your face…here look,” he said turning her towards the mirror that hung near the front door. As he pushed her forward, he suddenly realized what the marks were and he demanded, “Did Michael hurt you?”   
  
Sara leaned in, observing her face in the mirror. The longer she looked at herself, the more certain Lincoln became that they were finger shaped marks, and they covered her left jaw more prominently. “He did grab me, but I didn’t notice…” she said, still examining herself. “Now that I think about it, I am a little sore, but it’s nothing, rea—“   
  
“Nothing! Nothing? I don’t care how mad he was, he—“   
  
She spun around to face him. “Lincoln, calm down. He didn’t purposely do it. He didn’t hit me or anything, he was just angry and I wouldn’t look him in the eye, so he grabb—“   
  
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Lincoln muttered, moving away from her. “After he attempts to beat my ass, I’m going to knock the living shit out of him. What the hell was he thinking?”   
  
“He had just discovered that we are in love with each other. He had a right to be upset.”   
  
“Upset, yeah. Abusive? Hardly.” He swung away from her and looked around the apartment. It looked just like he’d left it, only more tidy.  _More Michael_.   
  
“He wasn’t abusive, Lincoln. He was angry. You’ve left bruises on me a few times yourself, remember? I bruise fairly easily.”   
  
Lincoln looked over his shoulder at her, smiling despite the situation. He had left bruises on her, with his lips and his fingers, but they had normally been in locations where no one but himself ever saw them. “That’s not the same,” he argued, his blood warming a bit with the memory. Before she could respond, he asked, “Where do you think he went?”   
  
“I have no idea. We mostly hung around here or at my house, we didn’t have any places we went together regularly. Can you think of someplace?”   
  
Lincoln ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I could go to some of the places we used to hang out in, a couple of bars, but really, in those years before I went to Fox River, we didn’t see each other a lot. We had some distance between us.”   
  
Sara didn’t respond immediately, but it wasn’t until he heard the tears in her voice that he looked up at her. “And I just made it worse.”   
  
“Oh, come on. This is not your fault. Like usual, anything terrible that’s happened is my fault.”   
  
“How is it your fault? I’m the one who climbed into bed with you.”   
  
“I didn’t exactly shove you out, now did I?”   
  
“You had just gotten out of prison.”   
  
“You were my brother’s girl.” Lincoln felt that was the trump card, and when Sara didn’t reply he continued, “And besides, who ended it? Not me, you. To tell you the truth, we would have been fucking right up until the day he got of out prison if I hadn’t messed it up.”   
  
Sara wrapped her arms around herself again and moved over to the sofa to sit down. “We weren’t fucking, Lincoln. That’s what the problem is, you know.”   
  
Lincoln leaned up against the wall and watched her as she pulled a knee up and rested her chin on it. “Yeah, that is the problem, isn’t it? Why did you tell him?”   
  
She shook her head. “I didn’t tell him, he found the note you left me. It was bad,” she said, her eyes tearing up again. “We were already arguing about going to California and then… He’s been gone for close to 24 hours. I feel like we should call the police.”   
  
Lincoln shook his head in disagreement. “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt himself. He’s not like that. He probably just went for a drive and decided not to come home yesterday. I’ve left about five messages on his cell phone, and the last four were apologies peppered with cussing him out for not calling me back. He’s not afraid of confrontation, and I told him I was coming to Chicago, so he’ll arrive soon, I’m sure. You should probably go, actually, because it’s going to be bad when we do see each other.”   
  
Sighing, she leaned her head back on the couch, stretching her legs out in front of her. “Do you think you guys can recover from this? Will he forgive you?”   
  
Lincoln shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve never had this type of thing to deal with. So…” Biting his lip thoughtfully, he said what he figured was the best and most obvious solution. “If I tell him I’m never seeing you again, that should be a starting off point. I mean, with me in California and you here…it’s not like this can go on.”   
  
“It hasn’t gone on. He doesn’t understand that we haven’t even been together in over a year. But it hardly matters, Lincoln. I don’t have to be with you to still love you.”   
  
His heart galloped as the words left her mouth so easily. Taking a moment, he said slowly, “I know, but he can’t see my heart. He could see me with you. If I’m not with you, he doesn’t have to be reminded of it all the damn time.” He glanced away. “And we’ve been doing okay without each other.”   
  
“Yeah,” she said, agreement the loosest term for the sentiment behind the word. “And you can’t live without your brother. He’ll forgive you. He has to, you’re his only family.”   
  
Lincoln chuckled. “Right, way to give him a choice. Me or nothing. Hmmm…which is worse?”   
  
“Worse is trying to make something be that isn’t. I know,” she said softly, bringing his eyes back to hers.   
  
“Oh, Sara,” he breathed, wanting to get rid of all the space between them. She was right though that distance was not the problem. In fact, it seemed no amount of space changed anything in regards to his feelings, but the other thing that never changed was Michael. And Michael had to come first every time from now on, even if he didn’t believe he was coming first. “I’m so sorry,” he said, his words sounding pitifully understated even to his own ears.   
  
She stood up and walked over to him. “Lincoln, if you can fix this between you two, then I’ll be all right. I never thought that night in New Mexico that any of this...would ever happen. I can’t be what’s between you anymore than you could let me be between you. I know that. I’ve always known that. I should have been honest with him from the beginning.”   
  
Lincoln curled his palms into fists so as not to wrap his fingers around her and pull her close. “We didn’t know in the beginning. I didn’t really know until now, Sara. I thought for sure once you were with him...”   
  
Obviously not feeling the need to  _not_  touch him, she pressed a finger against his lips. “You never wanted to believe I could love you. Why is it so impossible? It’s not. You’re so lovable your brother did what he did. And I love you enough not to make you choose, either, Lincoln.”   
  
She was so close, too close, and her words were like warm blankets wrapping around his heart, making him want to hold her and nuzzle her and lose himself inside her. “I wish...” he started, but then her finger moved, slipping over his chin and he somehow had her in his arms, gathered against his chest. “I wish I had known that morning was the last time I would be with you. I would have made it last forever.”   
  
Her lips were too close now, everything right where he could almost taste it. “I know,” she said softly. “Me, too,” and then their lips met gently and Lincoln wondered how he could do this. He loved Michael, he did, but giving up Sara again, he just didn’t know if he could do it. When her lips opened under his, this time with more passion than the moment before, he thought he heard his body crack, right down the center.  
  
They jerked apart when the front door opened and the figurative cracking that had already started just got more intense when his eyes met Michael’s. “Well, what a nice surprise,” Michael said sarcastically. “I was hoping you’d all just make yourselves at home and that I could watch. Don’t let me interrupt. Just let me get comfortable.” He slammed the front door shut and then moved over to the sofa, perching himself on the arm of it with such a look of superiority that Lincoln itched to ram his head into Michael’s chest. But his brother’s eyes, normally wells of steel blue, cool and always calculating, held nothing but pain; betrayal that Lincoln had no excuse for, and no amount of ‘I really love her, now, Mike’ could ever make right. It happened then, Lincoln’s stomach cramped far worse than anything he’d felt before and he clutched at it automatically before understanding that giving up Sara would be hard, but losing Michael would kill him. He couldn’t let it happen.   
  
Sara had moved to the left, closer to the kitchen entry way and Lincoln stepped forward. “Glad you finally showed. We were getting worried about you.”  
  
“So worried you had to console each other, huh? I’m serious, don’t let me interrupt you.” Michael waved his hands at them, like he was pushing them closer together. “Come on. I want to see this great love you’ve got going on. Show it to me.” His eyes flickered from Lincoln’s face over to where Sara stood silently.  
  
“Michael, don’t be an asshole.”  
  
Michael’s gaze jumped back to Lincoln and he raised one eyebrow. “I’m sorry, I’m pretty sure you already took that job.”  
  
“You want to hit me? You want to call me names? Do whatever you need to, little brother, beca—“ but Lincoln didn’t get to finish his sentence because Michael leapt to his feet and swung wide, his right fist connecting hard with Lincoln’s jaw while his left fist came up the center and sank right into Lincoln’s gut.  
  
Groaning in sudden pain and staggering to stay upright, Lincoln had a split second to wonder at being sucker-punched by his brother before horrendous pain exploded in his stomach. Michael’s voice came distantly, like the throbbing had created a fog around Lincoln, “Whatever I need to, huh? I don’t think a million hits like that will make me feel better, but maybe it’s worth a try.” When he raised his fist to go for Lincoln’s face again, Lincoln reacted on automatic pilot. He’d been in too many fights, even when he was hardly able to function, and his survival instinct was strong after so many years on the street and in prison. Blocking the punch, he wrapped his fingers tightly around Michael’s wrist and swung his body out so that Michael’s arm twisted up behind his own body. In two seconds flat he had Michael shoved up against the wall face first and his arm at a highly uncomfortable angle against his back.  
  
“Look at her face, Michael. Look at her face. You left marks on her. You think that means  _you_  love her? Guess again, Mr. High and Mighty.” Lincoln breathed the words into Michael’s ear as he used his body to pin his brother to the wall. He watched Michael’s eyes struggle to focus on Sara, who stood in the same spot, but with both hands pressed to her lips. Lincoln’s gaze went to her too, unable to bear the pain on his brother’s face so close up.  
  
Sara’s eyes glittered with tears and she took a step towards them. “Don’t do this, don’t fight,” she whispered, her plea directed at Michael.  
  
Michael pushed back against Lincoln, groaning, “Let me go, you bastard.”  
  
Lincoln persisted until another ferocious pain ripped through his abdomen. He let Michael go, not because he’d demanded it, but because he could feel himself getting sick, bile rising up in his throat more quickly than he could control it. He pushed past Sara and made it to the kitchen sink before he threw up. A moment passed where he wasn’t altogether aware of his surroundings and when he opened his eyes, he was looking up into Sara’s worried face, with Michael right next to her. “Lincoln? Lincoln, wake up,” Sara said briskly, the way he remembered her speech patterns from Fox River. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “He’s conscious, Michael,” he heard her say, but again it seemed far away, as though everything his ears heard was from a great distance.  
  
“The ambulance is on its way,” she said, and then he could feel her hand wrap around his as she pulled it to her heart. “Can you say something, baby? Just say my name. Just say something.” Now her voice sounded lover-like, and a little desperate, but he couldn’t figure out what was going on.  
  
“Michael?” Lincoln croaked, and then he tried again. “I don’t need an ambulance. What the hell—“ and he tried to sit up, but he couldn’t and Michael’s hand landed against his shoulder anyway to keep him on the floor.  
  
“You just vomited blood, Linc,” Michael said, his eyes showing a fair amount of worry themselves, a matching set to Sara’s.  
  
“What?” Lincoln demanded, but now he could hear his own voice and he sounded ridiculously weak. “What happened?”  
  
“You passed out. I’m not sure what’s going on, but you’ve got some internal bleeding, Lincoln,” Sara said, and he recognized the doctor sound again in her voice. “You need to have some ex-rays.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Linc,” Michael said, and all the years fell away. Lincoln could hear a little brother who had just found his big brother passed out in the bathroom of their shit-hole apartment for the first time. The panic in his eyes and voice told Lincoln he didn’t know what to do now, any better than he had then, but it was with great confidence that Michael’s eyes traveled to Sara’s competent hands as her fingers pressed against his wrist and counted Lincoln’s pulse as well as continuing to ask him questions.  
  
“Can you tell me what day it is?” she asked.  
  
“It’s two days before Christmas. I’m fine,” he snapped, but he still couldn’t seem to get his legs to work well, and he felt so sluggish, as if he were underwater. It suddenly occurred to him that it wasn’t Michael and Sara who were far away, it was something in his head because he didn’t feel right.  
  
“Do you have pain here?” Sara asked and her fingers pressed on his abdomen and pain shot through him.   
  
He groaned sharply and said, “Fuck, don’t do that.”  
  
“Lincoln, on a scale of 1 to 10, how badly does this hurt?”  
  
“Forty-five,” he moaned, shoving her hands away. “I said don’t do that.”  
  
“What do you think it is?” Michael asked.  
  
“The pain in centralized in his stomach, but it could be any of those internal organs.”  
  
“I didn’t hit him  _that_  hard,” Michael said, guilt coating every word.  
  
“Shut up,” Lincoln said, reaching a hand up and knotting it in Michael’s shirt. “You didn’t do anything.”  
  
“Blood in your vomit is not a good sign, Lincoln,” Sara’s voice broke in. “Have you been having blood in your stool at all?” Lincoln was looking into his brother’s eyes when this question was posed and they both grimaced. Then Michael chuckled a little and so did Lincoln, only that shot more pain through his body, so he quickly stifled it. “Don’t be so immature,” she snapped at both of them, her fingers reaching to grip Lincoln’s chin to force him to look at her. “Have you? Had blood in your stool?”  
  
“I didn’t forget the question, Sara,” he grumbled. “Yes, I have, the last week or two. And my stomach’s been hurting, but I just…”  
  
“You’re just stupid. You could have something seriously wrong with you!” There was a sharp knock at the door and Sara jumped up and ran for it. “It must be the paramedics,” she said as she disappeared from sight.  
  
Lincoln’s eyes came back to Michael’s and he said with as much gravity as he could muster following a discussion about his bowel movements, “I’m sorry, Mike. I know that’s not for shit, right now, but I  _am_  sorry. And…just in case something’s really wrong with me, you gotta know that. I mean, not just hear me say it, but know I mean it. It’s over with me and Sara, it’s been over for a long time. I just really hoped—I really thought you two would be okay. I never meant—“  
  
When two men followed Sara into the kitchen he wasn’t able to finish his thoughts, but Michael moved out of the way so the paramedics could do whatever they needed to. They attempted to get Lincoln on his feet, but he was too unstable, so they lifted him on to a stretcher. “Michael?”  
  
“I’m right here,” Michael said, appearing by his side when they raised the stretcher up.   
  
“One of you can ride in the ambulance with Mr. Burrows,” the paramedic said.  
  
“Michael,” was all Lincoln said.  
  
“Are you sure?” Michael asked. “Sara’s right here, she can come with you.”  
  
“No,” Lincoln said just as Sara did. “I’ll follow you in my car,” she said. “You go with him, Michael. He wants you.” As everything dimmed around him, Lincoln heard her say, “He needs you. You’re his brother.” He felt Michael’s hand in his and then everything went black.  



	16. I'll Try To Do It Right This Time Around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from "It's Not Over" by Daughtry

Sara sat in her car because she couldn’t get it out into traffic until the double-parked ambulance carrying Lincoln and Michael moved. She watched as they shut the bus doors and the flashing lights on top of it lit up, reminding her suddenly that this situation was terribly precarious.  
  
She turned the steering wheel and got her car into the flow of traffic, but the tears she hadn’t allowed to fall while she assessed Lincoln’s condition began spurting from her eyes, and once they started, they weren’t just streams of water trickling over her cheeks, but instead wracking sobs that no doubt made it dangerous for her to be driving. She could no more stop them than she could stop driving, because she had to be there, she had to be at the hospital and know what was wrong with him.  
  
All she could hear, like a repetitive loop in her head, was Lincoln telling her that his mother had died of liver cancer. Along with the list of possible cancers (liver, colon, stomach, etc) she tried to think of other, less heinous possibilities, but she couldn’t focus or bring any other conditions to mind. Years of study and practice were out the window at just the idea that Lincoln might be seriously ill.  
  
“Please, God, please,” she breathed, trying to still the sobs convulsing her lungs. “If you make him all right, I swear I’ll walk away. I’ll leave them alone forever, just let him be okay. Please, please,  _please_ ,” she begged, swiping at the tears on her face as she pulled into the parking lot at Mercy Hospital. Shutting the car off, she dug through her purse for a Kleenex and tried to mop her face up somewhat. “Please,” she murmured again, her eyes drifting up to the ceiling of her car.  
  
When she got to the Emergency Room, she slipped though the sliding doors that were supposed to keep non-patients out of the work area. She knew her way around because this was the hospital she had worked in before she had decided to go to rehab the first time, as well as the place she had been taken to when she overdosed. She knew the brothers had been ahead of her by at least ten minutes and when she looked down the corridor to the trauma rooms, she saw Michael standing just outside one, looking in a window.  
  
Rushing to his side, she asked, “Is he conscious?”  
  
“No,” he said, not even looking at her. “His blood pressure is falling, and they’re sure he’s got internal bleeding. They’re doing an ultrasound right now.”  
  
“Did you tell them that you punched him in the stomach?” she asked.  
  
Now, he tossed her a look. “Yes, I told them. Honestly, Sara, you saw how hard I hit him. Was it enough to make him puke blood?”  
  
She tore her eyes away from the huddle of people who stood over Lincoln and blocked him from her view anyway. “No, there’s something more serious wrong. Your hitting him just forced him to face it.” She stared at Michael and saw the same worry across his face that was tearing at her insides. “It could be anything, Michael. It could be…”  
  
“Cancer. It could be cancer. We undoubtedly have a higher chance of getting it.”  
  
“I thought about that, too,” she admitted, and tears stung in her eyes again. “But the vomiting…that’s not a normal symptom. I’ve been trying to think of what else it could be, but…” When a sob escaped her throat, Michael’s arm came up around her shoulders and her pulled her against him. “I can’t th-think of anything,” she whispered as he pressed her head to his chest. “Oh, Michael. He has to be okay,” she said, her fingers reaching up to dig into his chest. “You have to forgive him. He has to be okay.”  
  
Michael didn’t say anything, he just held her tight, and it dawned somewhere inside Sara that once upon a time this was all she’d ever wanted: Michael holding her while she cried. Who would have guessed, a million years later, he would hold her while she cried for his brother?  
  


  
  
When a surgeon appeared next to Michael and Sara, Sara followed him into the trauma room and listened to everything that was being said. “Ma’am, ma’am, you shouldn’t be in here,” a nurse said, trying to usher Sara out.  
  
“I’m a doctor,” Sara said. “I want to hear what’s going on.”  
  
“Sara?” Lincoln’s voice came from the other end of the gurney, and she hadn’t even realized he was conscious again.  
  
She dodged the nurse and dashed over to him, so she stood near his head. “I’m here, baby,” she said softly, placing a hand against his cheek. He felt hot and clammy under her fingers.  
  
“Michael?” he asked.  
  
“He’s right outside, I can see him from here.” Looking up, Sara waved Michael in.  
  
“The internal bleeding is in the lower quadrant of his stomach,” the attending physician said, for the benefit of the surgeon. “From what we’ve gathered from Mr. Burrows’ brother, it sounded like an ulcer, but when we did the ultrasound we could see that it is now a perforated ulcer, so he seems a likely candidate for surgery.”  
  
Michael came to stand next to Sara as all of this was explained and the surgeon asked, “Mr. Burrows, have you had any undue stress lately?” As he pressed his hand against Lincoln’s belly much the same way Sara had at the house. Only now Lincoln endured the discomfort silently.  
  
“You could say that, Doc,” he replied wheezily.  
  
“Ulcers are caused by bacteria,” Sara interjected.  
  
The surgeon’s gaze landed on Sara, and he smirked briefly. “Yes, they are, Miss…?”  
  
“Dr. Sara Tancredi,” Sara inserted.  
  
“Well, then you should be familiar with the studies that indicate ulcers, caused by bacteria, are often exacerbated by psychological trauma. And in this case, Mr. Burrows was  _also_  the victim of an injury to his abdomen, correct?”  
  
Sara had not been listening to all the information being exchanged around her, because as soon as she’d realized Lincoln was awake, that had been her only focus. “Yes, he was,” the attending physician confirmed.  
  
“Well, what do you say, Mr. Burrows, shall we get you up to the OR and get this taken care of? It’s a fairly standard procedure, and other than a few weeks recovery time, you are in no grave danger, unless we allow the bleeding to continue.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan, Doc,” Lincoln said.  
  
“Dr. Tancredi?” the surgeon asked mockingly. “Is that all right with you?”  
  
Sara couldn’t decide if he was just an ass, or if he didn’t like her because he knew who she was, or if he was just a naturally arrogant man, because surgeons tended to be that way, more often than not, generally speaking. At least that had been Sara’s experience as both an intern and a resident. “That’s fine with me,” she said sweetly, quelling the urge to spit in the guy’s face.  
  
“We’ll be here when you get out, Linc,” Michael said, and Sara noticed his hand was in his brother’s. Lincoln’s fingers squeezed Michael’s palm and he nodded.  
  
Sara wanted to lean down and brush a kiss over the pained frown in Lincoln’s forehead, but instead she only allowed her fingers to brush his cheek gently. “You’re going to be fine,” she whispered.  
  
His eyes moved to her face and she saw something there, something he couldn’t say, just like she couldn’t follow the urge of her heart. He smiled, the softest, gentlest look, and she could almost hear his voice along her nerve endings.  _I love you_.  
  


  
  
Knowing a perforated ulcer, caught in time, was not terribly life-threatening didn’t do much to soothe Sara’s nerves. When Michael brought her a cup of coffee, she knew she shouldn’t drink it, but she couldn’t say no when he was being so kind when she was sure that was the last thing he wanted to be.  
  
As she tossed the empty Styrofoam cup into the trash, she turned to him and said, “You know, I think I’m going to go.”  
  
Michael had been studiously examining his own fingers just before she made this pronouncement to the waiting room they were in alone. His head came up quickly and his eyes assessed her penetratingly. “What? He’ll be out soon, Sara. And he’ll want to see you when he wakes up.”  
  
She looked away from him, her eyes measuring the distance between herself and the door and Michael and the door. She thought she could beat him there. “I know, but you’re here, and you’ll take care of him, right? I should go. I shouldn’t be here. I was on my way out, really, right before you showed up at the apartment. I had only gone back there because I was worried about you, and then he showed up. And we talked, and I explained things, and he understands. And you and I both know you don’t want me here, and I shouldn’t be here. I should go.”  
  
“Sara…”  
  
“Michael, no, don’t do this. Don’t be all ‘understanding in the wake of an emergency,’ okay? Three’s a crowd, and I’m the one who doesn’t belong. He’s going to be fine. And you’re going to be here, right? You’ll take care of him?” She knew he would, but she needed to hear him say it out loud.  
  
“Of course, I’ll take care of him. But you don’t have to leave.  _I_  don’t want you to leave. Linc won’t want you to leave. Don’t—“  
  
Before he could finish his plea, a nurse Sara recognized from the ER arrived. “Hi,” she said, causing Michael to stop talking suddenly. “I just wanted to give you an update. The doctor is closing the incision right now, and everything went perfectly. I thought you might like to come back downstairs while they finish up and get him to recovery. You can give blood downstairs, if you’re willing.”  
  
Sara looked at the nurse, dumbfounded. She had known he would be okay, but the relief she felt actually made her knees sag a little and she put a hand out, steadying herself against one of the chairs. She almost blurted out that she had been an intravenous drug user and that excluded her from giving blood, but before she could say anything, Michael leapt to his feet. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “Sara’s going to stay here, and wait to see Lincoln first. He’ll want to see her first, anyway.”  
  
“Michael…”  
  
“How long until we can see him?” Michael asked the nurse.  
  
“Probably about 20 minutes.”  
  
“Great! You can show me where to give blood and then you can come back and take her to see my brother.” His fingers wrapped around Sara’s arm and pulled her close to him. “She’ll be back in less than 20 minutes,” he said firmly. “If you leave, there will be no one with him when he wakes up.”  
  


  
  
When she was allowed into ICU approximately 21 minutes later, they had her put scrubs and a mask on, just to be careful of the other patients already housed there. Lincoln wasn’t particularly susceptible to infection, but there were others who might be.  
  
His eyes opened as she walked up to the bed, and the doctor said, “He’s already been told he can only see you for only a few minutes. Tomorrow he’ll be moved to a regular room, and he’ll probably be released the day after that, but he needs to rest now.”  
  
Sara’s hand was swallowed up in his automatically, and his grip was surprisingly strong considering he had just come out of anesthesia. “His brother will be here in a few minutes to see him. He’ll be allowed to, won’t he?”  
  
“Yes, of course. Jenny informed me that Mr. Scofield went down to give blood.”  
  
“Okay, good. Thank you, Doctor,” Sara said, the gratitude she felt overshadowing her offense from his rude behavior from before. Whatever he thought of her, and whatever she thought of him, he had saved Lincoln’s life, and there was no limit to the thankfulness that filled her being right then.  
  
“You’re quite welcome. I expect you to make a full recovery, Mr. Burrows. You’re quite healthy despite this problem. You should bounce right back.”  
  
“Thanks, Doc,” Lincoln said, his voice raspy. His eyes traveled back to Sara, and as they were left alone, she couldn’t help the tears that spilled over her cheeks. “Hey,” he said, concern tightening his features. “Everything’s okay, baby.”  
  
She nodded vigorously, unable to explain what she was feeling. It was part relief knowing he really would be all right, part resignation to the knowledge that this was it. She was saying goodbye, and she had to find a way to make him believe she’d be all right. She knew she wouldn’t be, at least not for a while, but she deserved that for what she had done to both Lincoln and Michael.  
  
His hand came up, the one with an IV stuck in it and wrapped around a handful of her hair, gently pulling her face down to his. The fingers of his other hand tugged the facemask out of the way. He kissed her without preliminaries, and she tasted it on his tongue. He was saying goodbye too, he understood. Perhaps that made her cry even harder. When he let her mouth go, she stayed close, leaning her forehead against his cheek. “I love you, Lincoln,” she breathed quietly near his ear.  
  
“I know,” he replied. “I know, Sara. I think I always knew it. But thank you for saying it anyway.”  
  
“I’ll always love you, no matter what,” she said, and she knew it was true. She might move on someday, she might find someone who wasn’t Lincoln, and who also wasn’t Lincoln’s brother, but she didn’t want to contemplate that now. In this moment all she knew was he was her great love and she was walking away from it. She was walking away for a lot of good reasons, and there wasn’t one of them with a loophole. This was the only solution.  
  
Raising her head up, she traced his lips gently with her finger. “I wanted to tell you that. I wanted you to know that.”  
  
His eyes shone under the harsh fluorescent lights, and he blinked slowly once, then again. “I’ll love you forever, Sara. Never doubt it.”  
  
She heaved a tremulous sigh, smiling at his declaration. “I better go,” she said reluctantly. “Michael will be here soon. He promised me he’d take care of you. It will be all right. You’ll be all right.”  
  
His thumb rubbed over her cheek and he examined her face slowly, the after effects of the anesthesia slowing everything down. Or maybe he was just dragging it out because it was their last moment together. “You’ll be all right, too?”  
  
It was a question. She could see he wanted her to tell him the truth.  
  
But she told a beautiful lie instead. “I’ll be fine.”  



	17. A Part of Me is Dead and In the Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from "It's Not Over" by Daughtry

Lincoln fought the effects of the morphine coasting through his system, and was still awake, but barely, when Michael came into the ICU wearing scrubs about 30 minutes after Sara left. Or maybe, he just kept waking himself up, he wasn’t sure.  
  
Of course, Michael’s question would have woken him up anyway. “Where’s Sara?”  
  
Lincoln was high, he knew that, but he could hear the demand, the agitation and the outrage all shoved into four little letters. “She left. Said goodbye. Said you were gonna take care of me.”  
  
“Damn her,” Michael muttered.  
  
“You’re not gonna take care of me?” Lincoln asked, trying to refocus his brother. Michael needed to accept it just as Lincoln had. This was the choice he had made, and he didn’t regret it. Or at least, presently, he didn’t regret it enough to change it. And he wouldn’t. He loved Michael; Michael was his only family in the whole wide world besides LJ, and years before Sara ever entered their lives he had discovered sacrificing for Michael was something he was good at, something he could do well. Okay, so sometimes it didn’t turn out great, but still he loved his brother, and that was all that mattered. He didn’t have a lot of other talents, but he could cut it all right in the big brother department when he made the effort.  
  
And so he tried now to make sure Michael understood this very important element.  
  
“Of course I’m going to take care of you. But I told her she didn’t have to leave. I didn’t want her to leave, Linc.”  
  
“It’s all right,” Lincoln said, reaching a hand out. His depth perception didn’t work at the moment so his hand waved somewhere over his own body before Michael’s stretched out and captured it. “It’s all right, this is the way it will be.”  
  
Stoned or not, Lincoln was not immune to the death stare from the depths of blue steel that Michael called eyeballs. “You wanted her to leave? Don’t lie to me. You want her here. And she didn’t have to leave. Not on my account.”  
  
“Michael. Michael? Listen. Look, I’m about to pass out, so promise me you’re listening.”  
  
“I’m listening,” Michael said and he allowed Lincoln to tug him down.   
  
At the last minute, Lincoln yanked and Michael landed heavily on his shoulder next to the patient. Lincoln’s lips brushed Michael’s ear softly. “I do want her here, but I want you more. And this is how it is. You hear me?” Michael nodded. “When I wake up, it’s me and you. And we’ve got a lot of shit to straighten out.” A heavy breath expelled from Lincoln’s exhausted body. “You’ll be here?”  
  
Michael pushed himself up on his forearm, but stayed hovering over Lincoln. “Where else would I go?”  
  


  
  
At some point, Lincoln realized the stomach muscles were the most important muscles in the human body, because he couldn’t get up to pee, he couldn’t sneeze, he couldn’t even laugh (if there were anything to laugh about) without wincing in pain.  
  
Three days out of the hospital, three days on the couch in his old apartment, three days of hobbling from the couch to the bathroom, and back again, proved to be the most exhausting three days of his life. And when LJ called and wanted to come back to Chicago to help his Uncle Mike take care of Lincoln, Lincoln insisted that wasn’t necessary. A small argument ensued and finally Lincoln had had to spell it out for his son.  
  
Michael stood in the hallway when Lincoln hung up the phone and realized he had heard everything that had been said. The brothers just looked at each other for a moment and then Lincoln asked, “Am I wrong? We need time to work this out, and alone is the best way. I know we missed Christmas, but if we’re ever going to have future Christmases, I think this is—“  
  
“I agree, Lincoln,” Michael stated, walking fully into the room. “I didn’t mean to make you think otherwise. I guess I’m just wondering when we’re going to work it out, because you’ve been laying there for three days not talking. I know you’re in pain, but I can  _not_  talk to you just as easily if LJ and Jane were here. At least then I’d have them to talk to, too.”  
  
Lincoln fell silent and pressed his fingers to his forehead. “I guess I’ve been trying to figure out how to start it, and…well, nothing’s coming to me.” He looked up at Michael as his brother took a seat on the opposite arm of the couch. “I mean other than I’m sorry, which I gotta say, those words don’t hold much umph for me either.”  
  
“I believe you’re sorry. How could I not? You let your guilt eat a hole though your stomach. But, now, it’s not so much about that anymore, Linc.”  
  
“What’s it about, then?” Lincoln asked, dropping his head back. He got so tired so easily anyway he could just imagine this conversation sapping what little strength he had left.  
  
“It’s about believing you’d rather be here with me than with Sara. And I gotta say, without words, that’s really hard to believe.”  
  
“Mikey, you know, man.  _You_  know. You’re my brother.”  
  
“If it were that obvious or simple, you would never have slept with her in the first place, now would you?” Sitting as he was, straddling the sofa arm, Michael strummed the fingers of one hand against the sofa between his legs, methodically tapping each one. Lincoln was as hypnotized by the movement of his little brother’s fingers as he was the conversational tone Michael used to lay out all of his sins. “If this were about pure love, and what our relationship is, then that would have never factored in. Right? I mean, she said she started it, but it takes two to tango, as they say. What made you go back for more if you love me so much? And what made you apparently think I could just take up wherever you left off when I got out? That’s about more than I can fathom in and of itself.”  
  
Lincoln’s temples started throbbing. “I know, I know. We’ve never shared women before. And I can’t really explain it. It was desperation. Then it was lust. Neither of which is a good excuse, but there was just something there. Sara’s…”  
  
“No, don’t do that. Don’t list off her qualities. You don’t have to sell me on why you love her. I can see that and I can tell she loves you. But I’ve been at that place, Linc. Veronica and I…once. Almost. There was this moment, and we were a little drunk, and that’s a great excuse, don’t you think? We were drunk. She wasn’t even your girl anymore, hadn’t been in years, really. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go where you’d been.”  
  
Lincoln found himself recoiling inwardly at this new information, but he responded to what Michael said. “If you’d been there, maybe I couldn’t have either, Mike, I don’t know. But you hadn’t been there. When Sara needed you, you hadn’t been there.” He paused when Michael’s eyes flinched. “Not to be crass, but I honestly believed I was nothing but space filler. What you didn’t know wouldn’t have hurt you. But somehow it became more than that. I’m as much at a loss over that as you are.”  
  
“I don’t think our losses are the same,” Michael replied succinctly.  
  
“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, I can’t figure out why she’d prefer me to you, either.”  
  
Michael froze in the perpetual strumming of his fingers against the armrest. He studied Lincoln for a long moment and then asked, “What do you mean? Prefer me to you? This isn’t Coke versus Pepsi, Linc. I doubt very much that it is in fact a matter of preference. You’re an incredible person, even if you are a backstabbing liar from time to time. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Sara could love you. What surprised me was you—and well, I guess you sort of just explained it. I hadn’t left my mark on her, so like any animal, you did the marking.”  
  
Lincoln felt his defenses take offense. “I wasn’t pissing on her. I wasn’t taking her for my own. I never even thought about it like that, until…we weren’t doing that. I didn’t figure it out until it was over, and it didn’t really change anything once I did figure it out.”  
  
Michael scoffed. “It changed everything, Lincoln! My God, how can you not see that? She carried one of your little love notes in her purse with her, everywhere she went. That’s how I found out, I saw the note in her purse, and your handwriting slapped me in the face. What are the odds? I couldn’t  _not_  read it once I recognized the writing. Completely took me by surprise, only all of sudden it all made sense. Both of you, over the course of 18 months had changed. I just didn’t realize the changes were because of those feelings. And if you were anyone else, I’d still try to win her over, you know why? Because I’m better for her than everyone else.”  
  
“You’d be better for her than me, and I tried to tell her that.”  
  
“Lincoln, you’re an idiot. She tried to tell herself that too, but at the end of the day, who cares if I really am better for her? She loves you. She loves you, and I won’t compete with you, because I know all the reasons she loves you.” Lincoln shook his head, gearing up to argue but Michael put a hand up. “Just shut up. I know there are things about you that I can’t understand, but all the things about you that I do understand? It’s no big mystery to me that she would love you. I still want to beat the hell out of you, and if you weren’t recovering from surgery, I would. But honestly, Lincoln. Who do I love more than anyone?  _You_. How can I not understand how she feels?”  
  
“Because you don’t have yourself to love instead. If I had to choose between me and you, I’d choose you every time.”  
  
Michael’s jaw clenched and he looked away from Lincoln. “And that’s just what you’ve done, haven’t you?”  
  


  
  
So it turned out talking about it didn’t solve anything, Lincoln discovered. Michael had forgiven him, because he was still there, always there, willing to do whatever Lincoln needed him to do. But, like Jane before him, Michael was interested in solving the problem, and the truth was Lincoln didn’t want to solve it. He didn’t want to determine what made him love Sara and he didn’t want to cure it. He knew he couldn’t have her, but he didn’t want to not feel it anymore, so he and Michael came to an impasse and ceasefire.  
  
They spent the rest of Lincoln’s recovery time discussing the other things that had happened over the course of those 18 months. Long discussions about history, politics and good books that would never have caught the two of them before seemed to keep them up late at night, and Lincoln felt rather foolish at the sentimentality he felt at those discussions. He’d never thought much about how Michael’s education had been a hurdle between them, but he knew Michael had realized it because now he relished sharing his thoughts and ideas with Lincoln and even when their conversations grew heated over various topics, it was the stimulation of those things that made them come back for more.  
  
Three weeks after his surgery, in fact, the day after his check up with the doctor, Lincoln said to his brother, “So, you  _are_ going to move to California, right?”  
  
Michael’s eyes drifted from the computer screen he sat in front of towards Lincoln who lay sprawled on the sofa watching a special on the Civil War on the History Channel. “You think I should?”  
  
“You know I want you to, and since I’m gonna buy a plane ticket here in a few minutes, I might as well buy two.”  
  
“I’ve thought about it, Linc. And I want to. I want to leave this behind me. But I need some time to do that.”  
  
“How much time?”  
  
“A few weeks. I’ll pack up this apartment, I’ll sell off the stuff we don’t need. I’ll drive out there. You know, drive across the country to actually see it this time, not because the FBI’s hot on my tail.”  
  
“Really?” Lincoln asked, his heart speeding up. “You’ll come out there?”  
  
“Yes,” Michael said assertively. “I’ll come out to California.”  
  
“I’m glad, Mike,” Lincoln said.  
  
“Me, too,” he answered, smiling. The phone rang right then and Michael reached for it. “Hello? Oh, hey, LJ. Yeah, he’s right here. Hey, guess what? I’m coming out there in a few weeks. For good. Yep, we’re all going to be beach bums, I guess. I know, me too. You do that. Yeah, a few weeks. By the end of February for sure. Okay. Yeah, I’ll do that. I love you, too. Here’s your dad.”  
  
Leaning over, he tossed the phone to Lincoln who couldn’t restrain the smile on his face at knowing Michael would be out in California in only a few short weeks. Then they would have time to establish permanently that what Lincoln had done had not destroyed their relationship. “What’s up, kid?” he asked into the phone.  
  
“Dad, when are you coming home? Jane’s birthday is on Friday. Did you remember that? We’ve got to get her some nice presents.”  
  
“Whoa, whoa. I was planning on coming home this week, but I haven’t bought the ticket yet. I’ll let you know when I know. Her birthday, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, and I want it to be special, you know. Remember last year? We didn’t know it was until after the fact because she didn’t tell us. But I’m not letting that happen again.”  
  
“Yeah, I remember. Okay, well, I’ll make Michael go shopping with me. We’ll pick her up some stuff. You do the dinner and cake stuff. I’ll try to get out there by Friday, but why don’t you plan for Sunday anyway, that will be better. Make her think we don’t remember and then surprise!”  
  
Lincoln’s eyes were drawn to Michael who had an incredulous look on his face. He read the sentiment plainly. “Hey, I’ve become Mr. Thoughtful, I know.”  
  
“What?” LJ asked.  
  
“Your uncle’s giving me a hard time for wanting to go shopping for Jane. He’s not used to the new and improved Linc.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I guess we all have to make adjustments, huh?”  
  
LJ’s tone sobered Lincoln immediately. “What’s up?” Lincoln asked.  
  
“Nothing, I’m just wondering, are you really okay with this. You and Uncle Mike, with no Sara. No Sara for good.”  
  
“This is the way it is, LJ, and it’s the way it should be. Don’t worry about me. Well, you should worry. Worry I can pick out some sweaters or something Jane will like.”  
  
“Just remember to get a gift receipt,” LJ advised.  
  
“Yeah, good idea,” Lincoln said, smiling at Michael again. As his brother’s eyes returned to the computer screen, Lincoln wondered how long it would take for lies to become truth.  
  


  
  
“What size is she?” Michael asked as they looked at several shelves filled with sweaters in the Gap.  
  
Lincoln shrugged. “I don’t know. This big?” He held his hands out, showing Michael the width of Jane’s shoulders.  
  
“What about her breasts, Lincoln? Is she big-chested? That makes a difference too,” Michael said with exasperation. “I should have known this would be a nightmare. I should’ve made you come by yourself.”  
  
“You know what Jane looks like, same as I do. I’ve never checked her rack out, though, so I can’t say…I think she’s medium sized. She’s bigger than—“ he cut himself off before he could say Sara’s name. It caught him by surprise, even thinking about her, but there were no other breasts he was currently intimate with. Sara’s had been the only ones he’d seen or handled in the last year and a half, and he could close his eyes right now and still feel their plump, firm weight in his hands or pressed against his chest.  
  
He looked up at Michael, hoping his brother hadn’t figured out where his train of thought had gone, but Michael was staring just past Lincoln’s shoulder with a rather pained expression on his face. Lincoln turned slowly, knowing who was there, and he wondered if he had the power to conjure someone up with just his thoughts. Sara stood two clothing racks away from them, and he was fairly certain if Michael hadn’t noticed her first, she would have silently slipped away and they would never have known she was there at all.  
  
“Hi,” Lincoln said because nothing else would move past the lump in his throat.  
  
She smiled, but he saw that the light never touched her eyes. “Hi. How are you?”  
  
“Good, we’re good,” he said, clearing his throat and waving towards Michael. “How are you?”  
  
Just then a dark haired woman Lincoln had never seen approached Sara. “What do you think about this? This is nice.” She held a black blouse and as she attempted to put the shirt up against Sara, she realized Sara was talking to someone. “Oh, I’m sorry, excuse me,” she said, looking at Lincoln curiously for a moment before her eyes slid to Michael. Lincoln could tell the exact moment when she realized who they were because her eyes widened and her gaze darted back to him before she turned her head quickly to look at Sara. He watched as her hand closed around Sara’s arm in a blatant gesture of comfort.  
  
“Michael, Lincoln, this is Vivian Barnes. Vivian, this is Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows.”  
  
Lincoln and Vivian quickly mumbled something about it being nice to meet each other, but Michael remained silent. In the awkwardness, Lincoln found something to ask, “Hey, Sara, what size do you think Jane is?” Again he motioned to Michael and said, “It’s her birthday, so we’re trying to get her something nice.”  
  
Sara thought for moment. “In shirts, she’s a medium. Pants or skirts, hmmm, I’d say a 6, maybe an 8. Get a gift receipt, just to be sure.”  
  
Lincoln felt himself grinning. “Yeah, that’s what LJ said. A gift receipt.” Without thinking he took a step closer to her. “Maybe a gift  _card_  would be a good idea.”  
  
Sara’s head tilted in a movement he recognized as patient annoyance. “It’s the thought that counts, Lincoln. Even if she has to return it, I’m sure she’d rather you pick something out for her.”  
  
He realized then he was moving, and he forced himself to stop. He looked back at Michael, who watched him with inscrutable eyes. “That’s true,” he said inanely and then he turned around and made himself walk back towards Michael, to the other side of the shelves they’d been browsing through.  
  
“Are you staying in Chicago?” Sara asked, and he stopped moving again, this time because Michael reached out and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him to a stop.  
  
“No,” Michael answered, when Lincoln just looked at him. “We’re going to California soon. But Jane’s birthday is coming up, so we needed to get her a few things.”  
  
Sara nodded, and Lincoln watched as she forced her gaze to Michael’s face. “Mervyn’s is having a sale,” she said. “We just came from there. Lots of cute things.”  
  
“Great. Thanks,” Michael said.  
  
“We should go,” Vivian interjected. “I saw some nice skirts back there.” She pulled Sara with her, pointing towards the back of the store and moving away from the brothers.  
  
“Nice to see you,” Sara threw over her shoulder.  
  
Lincoln felt himself tense up again and it took all his strength to keep his legs from chasing after her. Then he realized Michael’s grip on his arm had tightened too. “Good to see you, too,” Lincoln said, lifting a hand to wave goodbye. Turning around, he forced his eyes to the other end of the store, so he didn’t have to watch her go.  
  
A moment passed in silence before Michael asked with quiet intensity, “You all right?” His fingers were still wrapped around Lincoln’s elbow.  
  
Lincoln looked up, his eyes colliding with Michael’s. There was something akin to sympathy in his brother’s face and that made Lincoln feel sick. “Fine. Just fine.”  



	18. It's Not Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from "It's Not Over" by Daughtry

“We’ll go to a meeting.”   
  
Sara’s head jerked around and she looked at her new friend with ill concealed agitation. “A meeting? I’ve gone to meetings everyday for nearly a month! Vivian, I don’t want a drink or a needle. I want that man and no meeting is going to supplant the desire!”   
  
She paced in her own living room, and rued the hour that Vivian called her and asked her if she wanted to go to the mall. Because she recognized her reclusive lifestyle wasn’t conducive to getting over Lincoln Burrows, she’d reached out for the first time in years (she didn’t count ‘Lance’) to someone at a meeting. Vivian Barnes was a little older than Sara and ran her own business, but for years had been a closet crack smoker. She was clean four years now, but she and Sara had much in common. They quickly bonded and Sara had surprised herself by telling Vivian the whole story about her and the brothers.   
  
“Sara, calm down,” Vivian said, stretching a hand out as Sara walked past the lounge chair Vivian sat on.   
  
“If I calm down, I’ll breakdown. I’m so sick of this. I just wish I’d never met either of them. I haven’t had a moment of peace in almost two years because of them.”   
  
Finally, Vivian got to her feet and grabbed Sara by the arms. “Stop it. That isn’t true—that isn’t true and you know it.” She shook Sara once, quite joltingly. “I’ve listened to you talk for hours about Lincoln, and I’m not going to let you rewrite your own history. Accept it for what it is, Sara. You had a moment. You’ve loved and been loved—you still are loved, I saw it all over his face. There is so much in that, and so many people don’t even get that, ever. Truthfully, isn’t it better to have had it and sacrifice it for something good then to have never had it at all?”   
  
Sara’s eyes were dry. She had no more tears; she’d already spent a year crying anyway and she was just empty, bereft. But this was why she loved Vivian—because she was impartial, she could see something in the situation that perhaps Sara would see someday. She hoped, though her hope was small now.   
  
Hugging herself, she turned away, pacing across her living room again. “Maybe I’ll feel that someday, Viv. Right now, all I feel is anger for what I don’t have and I don’t think I have room for anything else.”   
  


  
  
Sara had just stepped out of the shower when she heard her doorbell. Checking her watch that laid on the counter near the sink, she cursed. She’d ordered Chinese food, but they told her it wouldn’t be there for another 15 minutes. She hurriedly wrapped her hair in a towel, put her robe on and went in search of her wallet so she could pay the take-out guy. “Just a minute!” she called, running for her purse. Turning it upside down, she dumped all the contents out onto the sofa and found her wallet quickly.   
  
“Sorry about that,” she said, winded, as she opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting you for a few more minu—“   
  
Her gaze moved up, and instead of stopping at about 5’5” where the normal delivery boy’s head would have been, it kept going, right up to 6’2” and Lincoln’s blue eyes. Then, like she’d been sucker-punched, she lost her breath altogether and just gaped at him. When she’d seen him at the mall, she’d been pleased to discover that he looked completely healthy, and was at least assured that he had recovered from his surgery just fine. Now, all of four days later, she couldn’t help the feasting that her eyes did at such close proximity. He looked good. He looked better than good. He looked good enough to eat. As he watched her, his eyes crinkled in a little smile and he asked, “Who were you expecting?”   
  
“Chinese food,” she gulped.   
  
“Ah, well, sorry to disappoint.”   
  
Disappointment wasn’t the word she would have chosen. Surprise, bafflement, confusion. Those were good words. Oh, and total arousal. She wanted him so much in that moment, she couldn’t regulate her breathing at all and her only thought was that she was naked underneath her terrycloth robe. “What are you doing here?” she asked.   
  
“Being stupid and selfish,” he responded. “You know, some of what I do best.”   
  
“No…” she shook her head, still unsure what this meant.   
  
“I’m leaving for California tomorrow, Sara. I’m never coming back to Chicago. Ever. And damn me to hell, but I didn’t want the last time I ever saw you to be at the fucking Gap.” When she said nothing, he said, “You can tell me to leave, and I’ll leave. No hard feelings. But I just needed something more than—“   
  
Her hand reached out and grabbed the front of his green t-shirt, pulling him into her as she opened her mouth. Their tongues might have touched before their lips did, Sara wasn’t sure, but in the next moment, she was pressed firmly against his body and he kissed her like this was exactly what it was: his last chance. Her last chance. Their last chance to touch and kiss and love each other. Somewhere inside her, Sara felt anger bubble up, but she let it turn to pure molten desire for him. When his hand slid down her back and cupped her ass, she jumped up, knocking their teeth together, but wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. It knocked him off balance of course and he stumbled before getting his arm under her to hold her to him before moving to the right to press her up against the wall.   
  
Their kisses grew frantic for a moment, as though they were both acknowledging the panic of never being together again, but then they changed, growing more calm, deep, and intimate. Lincoln’s tongue plumbed her mouth and stroked her tongue, dancing and retreating until she did the same thing to his mouth and arched against him wantonly. Finally breaking apart for breath, she gasped his name and moaned, “I need you, I need you, please…”   
  
“Don’t worry, baby,” he breathed, burying his lips in her neck. “I’m here, I’m here. I promise, whatever you need, I’ll give it to you.”   
  
He flexed into her and she felt his erection through his jeans and the wadded up material of her robe and she keened his name, the desperation pouring out of her. “Now, please, right now.”   
  
“Let’s go inside,” he whispered, trying to disengage himself a little bit, but her arms and legs tightened, a subconscious movement that showed her fear that he would somehow disappear from between her legs, from inside her arms, from right in front of her face. He hoisted her up and spun to carry her inside, but as he turned, she saw the Chinese food delivery boy coming down the hall toward her apartment door.   
  
“Wait,” she mumbled, dropping her legs from around him and rushing to pull her robe back into some semblance of order. She looked into Lincoln’s eyes, ready to explain, but the heat there took the words right out of her mouth. God, she loved him so much, and she needed him, and this was probably the most self-destructive thing she would ever do, but she would take whatever she could get.   
  
Pushing past him, she found her wallet on the floor of the hall. Yanking money out of it quickly, and thrusting it at the delivery boy before snatching her bag of food from his hand, she never even made eye contact with the kid as she said, “Keep the change.” As she entered the apartment, Lincoln grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close while he shut the door behind her. Flinging the Chinese food aside, and tugging at her belt, she loosened the robe from around her and his hands were there, shoving it down her shoulders so it dropped to the floor and her hands moved from her clothing to his. Pushing his shirt up until he took the initiative to drag it over his head and toss it aside, her hands undid his pants more quickly than she should have and he hissed in discomfort as she stripped them and his underwear down over his throbbing cock. “Sorry,” she said softly, wrapping her fingers around him in a gentle caress designed to both console and inflame him further.   
  
“Sara,” he groaned, lifting her up again so her legs could circle his waist, only this time there was no clothing between them and they both whimpered at the contact. Lincoln didn’t wait, didn’t kiss her, didn’t do anything except press her to the door and sink inside her in one hard thrust. Things stilled then, and their eyes met again. Dipping his head, he swiped his tongue along her bottom lip. “You still smell like heaven,” he panted.   
  
“I just got out of the shower,” she returned, stretching her neck a little to catch his bottom lip between her teeth.   
  
“I can tell,” he mumbled against her mouth as his hand reached up and tugged the towel from her head. Her wet hair tumbled against her neck and their faces. “You’re so fuckin’ tight, I don’t even need to move. I could just come like this, right here.”   
  
Sara shifted, moving her hips slightly, just slightly, because the pressure of his body against hers made it difficult to move at all. “You better move, because if I don’t come I’m going to beat the bloody hell out of you.” Their mouths disengaged when he smiled at her threat and she gasped when he swivelled his pelvis into her. “Are you all right?” she had the mind to ask. “I mean, healed up all right and everything? You’re not going to pop a stitch or anything are you?”   
  
“I’m gonna pop something,” he muttered, his hands moving underneath her to cup her ass more firmly. “But it won’t hurt. It’ll feel like a million bucks.”   
  
“I’ve missed you, so much,” she said, and she meant this, being this close, having their skin meld and their breaths intertwine.   
  
“After this, it’s over,” he said and he started moving, short strokes that made her neck weaken, causing her head to fall back against the door.   
  
“Oh, Lincoln,” she breathed. “It will never be over.”   
  


  
  
Before the next time they made it to her bed, but Lincoln never withdrew from her body. He kept them together, and as he gingerly lowered them both to the mattress, she could feel him hardening again inside her. “I love you, Sara,” he sighed, dropping his head to kiss her breasts. Her nipples stood up in invitation and he stroked one with his tongue while the other enjoyed attention from his fingers.   
  
Drunk with satisfaction, but knowing he intended to wear them both out, Sara loosened her legs so they didn’t circle his waist anymore. She drew her knees up so that she was wide open beneath him and he groaned against her breast as the movement drove him deeper inside her. His head popped up and he slung his arms up under her knees, so his elbows caught them, lifting both of them up higher, and Sara gasped his name again. As he started thrusting, she continued to chant his name, and she knew ‘God’ dropped from her lips as well, but she thought maybe it was truly a prayer, a prayer that this could go on, that they would be able to love each other for more than an evening, for more than the length of time it took to reach orgasm together.   
  
When she spasmed around him, his lips covered hers, swallowing her cries so that everything she gave him was inside both of them. A moment later he stiffened, and she felt his release wash through her, dark and heated and splendid.   
  
As she relaxed under him, she felt the sweat cooling both of their skins. Running a hand up the back of his neck into his now sweat-dampened hair, she murmured, “We both need showers now.”   
  
Lincoln’s head was pressed to her shoulder, but he moved, rolling off of her and pulling her with him so they were still close together, though no longer joined intimately. “Later. I intend to make love you until I can barely walk, so there’s no point in taking a shower until much later.”   
  
Her fingers danced up his side, smoothing over hard muscle and supple skin in rediscovery. She could feel the happiness radiating through her, and in comparison with the darkness she had existed under for so long without Lincoln, she realized if this was it, she was going to enjoy it to the full extent, just as he intended to. She wouldn’t mention Michael, or California, or the future. Their life together was just now, just tonight, and she would relish it for all it represented, for all it could never be.   
  
His mouth quirked up into a grin and he rolled over on to his back. “Here, take a look. You can see it’s healed up very nicely.”   
  
Sara pounced, looking at his abdomen carefully, holding her hair back with one hand so it didn’t get in the way. Smoothing her fingers over the red line, she noticed it was a nice incision, and the surgeon, who had been a gigantic jackass, was at least appropriately prideful of his skill. “No pain?” she asked, glancing up at Lincoln’s face.   
  
“Good as new,” he said, one of his hands cupping the back of her head.   
  
The tension in his arm told her he wanted to draw her face up to his for another kiss, but she grabbed at his hand and dropped her head down, rubbing her lips against the healed mark. His belly quivered under her cheek and her lips curved upward, brushing his skin again. She dotted his stomach with kisses, dipped her tongue into his navel while her hand wrapped around his flaccid penis, though as soon as she touched it, it perked up a little. “Insatiable,” she murmured. “You’re shameless.”   
  
“Hey,” he said, a slight tone of irritation lacing the word. “I haven’t had any in a long time. Give me a break.”   
  
“I’ll give you more than a break,” she said as she dragged her tongue over the head of his cock.   
  
He made a choking sound and his hands gripped her hair almost painfully. “Dear God,” he breathed. “Thank you.”   
  
Sara raised her head and his eyes tried to focus on hers. “You haven’t been with anyone, since me?” she asked.   
  
He let her hair go and held up his hands so she could see them. “Here’s what makes love to me when the need arises.”   
  
“You’ve got to move on,” she said, half-joking, half-serious.   
  
“Easier said than done.” He eyed her thoughtfully for a moment before confessing, “I know you didn’t sleep with Michael. I think that just added to his pissiness over the whole thing.”   
  
“I tried to, but I couldn’t go through with it.”   
  
“If I had known… Oh hell, I don’t know.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“I was just going to say I wouldn’t have tried to push you off on him, but that’s probably a lie. At least if you were with my brother, I would know you were all right and taken care of. Now, I’ll just have to hope and pray,” he said, his fingers trailing over one of her cheeks.   
  
“Lincoln, it would always have come down to this. If I were with Michael, we would still have to stay away from each other, because eventually one of us would break, being in close proximity. You’re smart to come here when you have no other choice to leave, because if you were staying in Chicago, this would just go on and on and on. We can only deny ourselves for so long.”   
  
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have come here today. I was serious about the stupid and selfish thing. You’re my new drug, baby.”   
  
Sara slid up so that they could lie close together on a pillow, abandoning for the moment the blowjob she intended to give him. “I thought that at first too, you know. I kept comparing you to morphine in my head, but I just realized when I saw you the other day it’s not the same. The alcohol and the drugs were bad for me, there’s just no way around that. Now, I might crave you like I craved them, and there’s a correlation there, mostly about my personality, I guess, but for once the thing I want most in the world, it’s good for me. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t be with Michael—after being with you, I’ll never be able to be with someone for the wrong reasons ever again. I know what the real deal is now, and to settle for less just isn’t possible.”   
  
Sara could see he was humbled by her words, and his eyes shined with tears briefly before he wiped them away. “If you want to think of me as a drug that you have to resist, I understand. But I want you to know I know exactly who and what you are to me. You’re my great love, Lincoln. You’re my moment in time that I had it exactly right. I know I’m not that to you, I know you had Veronica before, but I’ve never had this type of relationship with anyone.”   
  
He placed a hand at the small of her back and drew her closer on to the pillow they were sharing so that only a couple inches separated their faces. “You’re right, there’s nothing bad about this at all, except timing.”   
  
“Michael’s moving with you to California, though, right?” She couldn’t help herself now that they were talking about it and she forgot about the earlier vow she’d made not to bring Michael up. “Things are good between you?”   
  
As he nodded, she felt one of his legs lift up over hers to shift her closer to him. He was fully aroused again and it gently prodded her in the stomach. “We’re doing all right. We’ll get better when we’re out there.” He dipped his head and placed his lips under her jawbone.   
  
“Except of course he doesn’t know you’re here, right now.”   
  
His lips moved up to her ear, and he breathed softly, “He told me you kept that note I wrote you in your purse. Why did you do that?”   
  
Sara pulled her leg from under his to slide it up over his hip and bring them into teasing contact with each other. “I still carry it with me,” she responded. “That was the first time you told me you loved me, and I thought the only time, and I want it with me always. I know that sounds like a high school thing to do, but I’ve never slept with it under my pillow or anything.” She shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “Silliness, I guess, and selfish and stupid as you say because if I didn’t take it with me everywhere none of this would have happened.”   
  
“Bullshit. It was going to hit the fan one way or another. We were just kidding ourselves.” His hand curved around her bottom and then shifted her up so he could enter her slowly. “You know what I bought?”   
  
“What?” she asked, her voice dropping as he filled her.   
  
“Glen Campbell’s greatest hits. I listen to it too much too, which is probably one of the many reasons I can’t get through a day without you on my mind.” Thrusting shallowly as he was caused Sara to gasp and arch into him. Pressing his lips to hers, he breathed, “Veronica was my first love, Sara. You, you are my great love.”   
  


  
  
Sara awoke some time later to find Lincoln sitting next to her in the bed, eating Chinese food right out of the box. “It’s a little cold,” he said, offering her a forkful of Broccoli Beef. “But it’s still good stuff.”   
  
She took the proffered bite and then eased up into a sitting position next to him. “Why did you let me waste time sleeping?” she asked, reaching into the box and plucking another broccoli spear to pop into her mouth.   
  
“I fell asleep too, but I woke up because I was hungry. You’ve only been asleep an hour, maybe.”   
  
Rubbing a hand across his chest, she snuggled next to him and let him feed her another bite of food. “When do you have to leave?”   
  
“My flight leaves tomorrow afternoon at 1:45.”   
  
Sara looked over at her bedside clock. It read 10:13pm. “That gives us a few more hours, I guess, huh?” she asked, turning back as he stuck the fork in his own mouth.   
  
“Yeah, a few more hours,” he repeated, grinning at her around the fork.   
  
“I have a million things to say to you, then, if this is the only chance I’m going to get.”   
  
“Oh, yeah? Like what?” he asked, leaning back from her slightly so he had a better view of her face.   
  
“I love you.”   
  
“I love you, too.”   
  
“I think you are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”   
  
“Shut up,” he said and she saw color suffuse his cheeks.   
  
“I’m serious. You’re gorgeous. Your eyes, your lips, your chest, your hair. I never knew that until you grew it out, but it’s beautiful hair. Women would kill for hair like that, and your eyelashes, for that matter. Oh, and I love your ears. They’re so cute.” She leaned in and blew a kiss against the ear closest to her and then licked his earlobe playfully.   
  
“My ears?” he asked incredulously. “Woman, you’re nuts.”   
  
“About you.”   
  
“Well, if we’re doing this, it’s my turn.” He looked at her nude body as if perusing what he wanted to comment on first. “The first thing I ever noticed about you was your hands. In Fox River, I remember thinking you definitely had healer’s hands. Soft, but strong. But after Fox River, your ass and your breasts caught my eye, I must say.” He put the fork inside the Chinese food box and reached out to cup one of her breasts. “They’re perfect, just a handful, just the right amount.” His eyes drifted up to hers. “But I love your hair, because it’s really red. I didn’t know it was really red until I saw this hair.” His fingers slid down her stomach into her pubic hair. “I confess I’ve never really paid any attention to your ears,” he said, grinning at her.   
  
Sara took the food box from his other hand, sighing as his big fingers eased between her legs. “I love your sense of humor,” she said.   
  
“I love your blowjobs,” he returned.   
  
“I used to love to watch you get frustrated when you were studying because you crumple paper and throw it like nobody’s business.”   
  
“I liked how you always tried to trick LJ into eating fruit.”   
  
“I’ll miss you every day of my life, Lincoln.”   
  
“I know,” he whispered. “Put the food down. I want to make love to you.”   
  
Sara reached over and dropped the box on her bedside table as his fingers teased the soft skin between her thighs gently. “I would have made you so happy,” she said, unable to stop herself from saying things that would bring them nothing but pain. She slid her hands into his hair and pulled his face down to hers.   
  
“I would have asked you to marry me,” he breathed, covering her mouth soundly. Sara thought he kissed her so thoroughly to prevent her from telling him that she would have said yes. 

 

 

 

  
  
The rest of the night involved them never spending more than five minutes apart. They made love as many times as physically possible, whispering to each other all the things that came to mind and spending the other moments in quiet tranquility.   
  
Sara had had a few lovers in her life. After all, a woman didn’t get to be 31 years old, and survive habitual drug use, without having a few lovers. But she’d been truthful when she told Lincoln that he had taught her what real love was, and that was as much a part of his lovemaking and the contentment she felt in his presence as it was that the next day he got up and kissed her lips softly before walking out the door.   
  
After he left, she didn’t cry. Somehow she had moved past the denial that she had lost something to the anger that she had lost something to the acceptance that perhaps she had gained one thing. She counted the days on the calendar and thanked God Lincoln had never carried a condom with him ever. When they’d been together before she’d been on birth control, but had long since discontinued the use of it. She would bet money that her period would not arrive in two weeks when it was due, and she had never been more sure of any mistake she’d ever made.  
  


  
  
She was leaving work nearly two weeks later when she found Michael leaned up against her car, waiting for her. She hesitated in walking straight towards him because he wasn’t looking at her and she thought maybe she could escape. But his head came up at the last moment and she forced herself to finish the distance between them.  
  
“Hi,” he said, his lips moving into what might have been a smile only to be aborted at the last second.  
  
“Hello,” she said, wrapping her fingers more firmly around her purse strap and readjusting it on her shoulder.  
  
“How’s it going?” he asked, standing up straight.  
  
“It’s going,” she replied, tipping her head slightly to watch his eyes as he looked around them nervously. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were going to California.”  
  
“I am,” he replied, his eyes coming back to hers. “I’m taking off tomorrow. Driving out there. It will be a solitary little adventure for me.”  
  
“You didn’t come to ask me to go with you, did you?” Sara joked, forcing her lips into a mockery of a smile.  
  
“No, no, I didn’t,” he said softly. “Look, Sara. I just wanted—I want you to know that I understand. I don’t like it, and maybe it will take a lifetime to really accept it, but you know, I didn’t go into Fox River just because Lincoln is my brother. I felt I owed him, I felt I’d put him there in a strange turn of events. That’s neither here nor there now. But I’ve done nothing but rack my brain since Christmas, trying to wrap my mind around all of this. I think if it had been anything less than what it is, I could never be okay with it. But all anybody has to do is see you two together and they can see it, if they’re looking for it. If I was looking for it.” He smiled a little now, and Sara’s puzzlement as to his visit increased as he spoke. Was he telling her he forgave her? What did that matter now? “Love is so elusive, isn’t it? When I was younger, and I watched Lincoln and Vee fall in love, I remember thinking what are the odds? What are the odds that the person you love loves you back? It just doesn’t happen every day, you know? It can’t. There are so many of us, and so many circumstances, so many events that lead us to defining moments in our lives. This is one of those moments for me.”  
  
Michael’s hand reached out and drew her closer to him, out of the flow of people walking past them on the sidewalk. “What are you saying?” Sara asked. She couldn’t miss the earnestness in his expression, but she hated to even let her mind assume anything about what he was inferring.  
  
“When I went into Fox River, I told myself if I died trying to save my brother, then it was a good death. It was the way I wanted to go if I had to, fighting for Linc. Fighting for myself, to save a family member I actually had a shot at saving. Now, I’ve got to live for Linc. I’ve got to let him live, and let myself live and be all right with the fact that it didn’t go the way I planned. But if I love him, really, then I can’t let him do this again.”  
  
“Do what again?” Sara asked.  
  
“Stoically give up his life for me. He ended up in Fox River because of a sacrifice he made for me. I can’t live with that again. It won’t make me happy, if you aren’t together. It doesn’t make me happy now, and it won’t make me happy in five years.”  
  
“What would make you happy, Michael?”  
  
“I’ve got to live my life for me. I can’t wait for the next time when Linc needs me to save him, because in reality he doesn’t need that anymore.”  
  
“He’ll always need you, you’re his brother.”  
  
His eyes glistened and Sara reached out a hand, placing it gently on his arm. “I know that. But he needs more than that. And so do I. And just because I haven’t found what else I need, doesn’t mean I get to keep Linc from having what he needs. Because he found it in you.”  
  
Sara became aware suddenly that there were tears on her cheeks in correspondence with Michael’s. “No…” she shook her head. “He doesn’t want me between you, and frankly, neither do I.”  
  
“You won’t be between us. It’s not like that.”  
  
“I don’t believe you.”  
  
“Well, then take of leap of faith, Sara. Do you want to be with my brother?” He paused briefly, but it was really a rhetorical question, so he didn’t wait for her to respond. “If you want to be with him then be on this flight in three weeks.” He handed her an airline ticket. “It’s bought and paid for. I gave you enough time to wrap things up here. If you don’t show up there, then I’ll know you just couldn’t take me at my word.” His long fingers tapped the envelope with the ticket inside it. “There are directions from the airport to Linc’s house in there, too, and a car reserved at the rent-a-car place at the airport.” He moved away from her, walking backwards up the street away from her. “If you don’t show up, I’ll know the answer.”


	19. I Was Blown Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title lifted from "It's Not Over" by Daughtry

Michael arrived in Huntington Beach five days after he left Chicago, and Lincoln enjoyed one full week,  _seven entire days_ in a row of his brother living in his house with him and LJ.  
  
On the eighth day, they were sitting at the dining room table eating Chicken Parmesan that Jane and LJ had made together when Michael said, “So, I’ve made a decision.”  
  
They had all been eating in companionable silence for perhaps five minutes after commenting on how good the food was, and Lincoln had just that morning told himself to be content. There were moments he longed for Sara, but he had accepted that was how his life would be. He still had moments when he missed Veronica, so what was the difference really? He thought of it the same way, the Conspiracy had robbed him of so much it just seemed apropos that at the end all he had left was Michael and LJ, with the addition of Jane, which in a small way was like having Aldo. He had his family, and that was all he had ever wanted, right?  
  
“What’s that?” he asked. By the look on Michael’s face he could tell whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.  
  
“I’m going to Panama,” Michael said in the same tone he might have asked one of them to pass the salt.  
  
“What?” LJ asked.  
  
Lincoln was speechless and he just stared at Michael with his fork halfway between his mouth and his plate.  
  
“I’m going to Panama. Not for good, but for an extended vacation. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, but I just made up my mind last night.”  
  
“Why would you leave when you just got here?” LJ asked petulantly. That was exactly Lincoln’s question so he still had no reason to speak.  
  
“I wanted to come and spend time with you guys, and I needed a little more time to understand a few things about myself. The truth is I’m not going to be happy anywhere until I figure out what I’m going to do with my life. I need some solitude, and I never did get to go to Panama. I did a lot of research on it, and I want to go there.”  
  
“What the fuck for?” Lincoln demanded. “You can have solitude here. You’ve got your own room and we’re hardly here with school and everything. That’s plenty of solitude to figure out what you need to do.”  
  
Michael shook his head. “You don’t understand, Linc. I won’t be able to figure it out by watching you live the lives you’ve chosen. I need space, and time. To be by myself.”  
  
“For how long?” Lincoln said, trying to keep his voice level, but doing a piss-poor job.  
  
“I don’t know, for awhile. Not forever. Just for a while. It’s not like I’m cutting ties with you guys, I’m just saying I need my own adventure, separate for me.”  
  
Lincoln slapped his napkin down on the table while his fork clattered against his plate, and got to his feet. He didn’t like this at all and he could feel the anger swelling up through his body like the mercury rising in a thermometer. “What the hell is this about? You don’t have to pussyfoot around LJ and Jane, they know everything anyway! Just shoot straight, Michael.” Michael looked up at him, and Lincoln could actually see the surprise his words had caused. “Quit acting like this isn’t about what it’s about!”   
  
“Lincoln, it’s not what you think, at least not for me.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Lincoln spat, moving around the table and grabbing things randomly, like the salad bowl and the butter dish to storm into the kitchen with.  
  
“It’s not, Linc!” Michael called after him.  
  
Returning to the dining room, Lincoln propped his hands on his hips. “Why would you leave your family, after being away from them for so long, unless said family,” he jerked a thumb at himself, “had pissed you off so bad you can’t stand to be around them?”  
  
“Lincoln, listen to my  _words_ ,” Michael said patiently, setting his own napkin aside and pushing himself back from the table, though he didn’t get to his feet. “I’m not angry at you. I’m going to Panama for  _myself_. This has nothing to do with Sara, at least not for me.”  
  
“What is this ‘at least not for me’ crap?” Lincoln all but shouted.  
  
“I think you’re overreacting here, and I think it’s directly related to you not being okay with the choices you’ve made.” Again, the calm patience with which Michael delivered these words did nothing but turn Lincoln’s flame up higher.  
  
“I said I was sorry! I  _am_  sorry! I made a bunch of dumb mistakes, but I’m trying to set them right!”  
  
Michael didn’t respond right away, instead turning his gaze away from Lincoln to look at LJ and Jane, both of whom were observing the whole incident with wide eyes. “I’m not talking about those choices,” Michael said quietly, a slight smile touching his lips before he shifted his gaze back to his brother. Lincoln cocked his head and threw his hands up in a ‘what gives?’ gesture, but said nothing, though his chest rose and fell with each agitated breath he took. “I mean that you shouldn’t have pushed Sara out of your life. I don’t think that’s what you wanted to do, and I don’t think you should have done it.”  
  
Shell-shocked, Lincoln couldn’t help himself from looking at Jane and LJ to see if they’d heard the same thing he’d heard. They had equally stunned expressions, so that helped Lincoln formulate a single-word question. “What?” he croaked.  
  
“You heard me,” Michael said, the faint smugness he used to carry making an appearance.  
  
Lincoln grabbed the back of the dining room chair that wasn’t being used and gripped it tightly in his fists. “I told you I wanted her, but I wanted you more, Michael. And that’s the truth.”  
  
“No, it’s not.”  
  
“Oh, so now you know how I feel, do you?”  
  
“You want me  _differently_ , you don’t want me  _more_.” Now Michael rose to his feet slowly. He moved down the table until only a few feet separated him from Lincoln. “You’re willing to give up something you don’t have to give up, Linc. You don’t have to want me more than Sara for me to love you, and forgive you. And I don’t have to be here, living in your house to love you and forgive you. You’ve gotta trust me. Trust what I say. I would never lie to you, and I’m not lying now. But whatever you choose to do, I’m going to Panama. And you can’t stop me. So you can believe me or not, but it’s out of my hands.”  
  


  
  
Lincoln walked far down the beach, at least two miles from the house. He kicked the sand with his bare toes and clenched his fists alternately to punch at the air in frustration and to dig his fingernails into his palms. It couldn’t be real; Michael couldn’t be serious.  
  
But what if he was?  
  
What if it could be?  
  
The only fantasy he’d ever allowed himself about a future with Sara went as far as the marriage proposal, and he had only thought about it one night, the night he made love to her like a madman, only to leave her behind, for good, for always. He had never thought about a life for them together; he had never imagined a moment for them that didn’t have an ending.  
  
Now that he could possibly imagine it, he was coming up blank. Or perhaps, too many images were coming up, so his brain just declared overload and went blank. That was probably it. He couldn’t bear to go through it again. He couldn’t go find her again, and tell her everything had changed, and let himself build dreams with her in them permanently; his fear was too great that she would say no. Not because she didn’t love him, not because she didn’t want to be with him, but because like him, how could she believe Michael? How could it really be all right, somehow? It just couldn’t be, and Lincoln stubbornly clung to that above all other ideas as he turned to run back to the house.   
  
He would tell Michael he could leave tomorrow, or he could leave three years from now, but whenever he came back from Panama, everything would be just as it was now. The house would only hold Linc and LJ (for as long as he wanted to live there) and Jane on family occasions and American Idol nights. There, he had it in his head what he would say when he got back. And he had two miles in between to make sure he meant it.  
  
When he neared the house, he stopped running, and tried to catch his breath. He circled the house, coming up on the left side where the wraparound porch led straight down to the beach. As he got closer, he could hear voices, but it wasn’t until he set his foot on the bottom step that Michael’s husky pitch reached his ears, “…wasn’t like I planned to feel this way. Really, I intended to stay pissed for as long as possible and work him over for years about it. I mean, what did I do for him? I gave up everything! But in the end…that was a trade off. He’d given everything up for me, first. Then I gave everything up for him, second. So now he’s going to do it again? Hell, no. Only if he wants to. If he doesn’t want Sara, fine. But I’m not going to be the reason he’s not with her.”  
  
There was a short pause, and then Lincoln heard Jane’s voice respond, “He wants her, Michael. He wants her, and how are you going to live with that? So you’ll escape to Panama for how long? When you come back here, they’ll be here, knee deep in love and marriage. What will you do then?”  
  
Michael chuckled. “Jane, you’re just like him. Never take anyone at their word. I really am going to Panama for myself. I want—need—to figure out my life. And if they are ‘knee deep in love and marriage’ when I get back, well, then I’ll continue to be the favorite uncle.”  
  
“What about how you feel about Sara?” Jane pressed and Lincoln almost turned away to slink back into the shadows of the setting sun. He didn’t want to hear this, didn’t think he could live with the knowledge. He could just start walking, right up the beach into oblivion.  
  
“I thought I loved her until I saw how he loves her. She, at one time, had the power to tie me up in knots, but I guess with the information that she never felt that way about me—if love isn’t nurtured, it dies. She never nurtured it in me. She was always trying to kill it, whether purposely or not. I wonder if he even realizes he loves her differently than he loved Veronica. It’s tangible. That day we saw her at The Gap, like I told you already, it was bizarre. It was otherworldly between them. Just watching them, it was like I could see the web spinning in the space between them, pulling them towards each other, and they were both fighting it as hard as they could. Right up until that moment, I hoped it would be anything but that. I knew they loved each other, but I didn’t know how much. How deeply.” There was a deep sigh and then the addendum, “I didn’t know how broken they would be without the other.”  
  
“It’s that obvious, isn’t it?” Jane asked. “It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. But it’s almost like you can tell Lincoln’s missing a vital body part or something. That he would be willing to live that way is a testament to his sorrow. He doesn’t want it to be this way; he’d give anything to change it.”  
  
“But he doesn’t have to, that’s my point,” Michael said, his voice rising a little in agitation. “I don’t want him to. And I told Sara that before I came out here.”  
  
Lincoln pinned himself to the side of the house and all but hyperventilated. He went back down the two steps he’d worked his feet on to and walked right back out to the beach. He couldn’t deal with it; he couldn’t go back into the house and face any of them knowing that Sara knew.  
  


  
  
Several hours later, he was still sitting on the beach, pretty much directly in front of his house, when LJ came and found him. “You ever coming back inside?” his son asked him.  
  
He shrugged and kept his mouth pressed to the inside of his elbow. He’d been sitting hunched over, with his arms wrapped around his knees and his face resting against his arm long enough that his back ached, but he couldn’t seem to get up and move.  
  
LJ sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “You know, it’s okay to be scared.”  
  
Lincoln let his eyes move in the direction of his only child, though it was dark now and LJ couldn’t tell where he was looking anyway. He lifted his head so his mouth could utter the words, “Don’t try to Freud me here, LJ. I’m not in the mood.”  
  
“You’re a jerk, you know that?” LJ asked sarcastically.  
  
Lincoln settled his face back into the curve of his arm and grunted an agreement.  
  
“I’m not using psycho-babble on you. I think it makes sense that you’d be scared of what Uncle Mike said. Because now it’s real, and you don’t just get to love Sara from afar. You’d have to love her every day, and make an effort and be different than you’ve been before. You’d have to worry that it might not work out, because all your other relationships didn’t work out before.”  
  
Lincoln lifted his head again and leaned back, letting his legs go straight in front of him while he plopped down in the sand. “LJ, let me explain to you what psycho-babble means. It’s when you try to guess what I’m feeling based on my actions, and then you say it out loud to me.”  
  
“Am I wrong?” he asked, turning around to look at Lincoln.  
  
Lincoln blew out a frustrated breath. “No.”  
  
“Then it isn’t babble anyway. Do you care how I’d feel? I mean, if you’re going to go get Sara and bring her out here to live with us?”  
  
Lincoln froze in the process of dragging a hand across his face. Of course, like usual, he’d been so self-absorbed he hadn’t even considered how it would make LJ feel. “Yes, I want to know,” he said firmly. “And I haven’t decided anything yet.”  
  
“I love Sara, Dad, you know that. I don’t have anything against her coming here. But more important than that, I want you to be happy. And that’s what Uncle Mike wants, too. Don’t be afraid of it.”  
  
Pressing his fingers against his burning eyes, Lincoln said, “Do you know how hard this is, LJ? To think that this could work out for me? Nothing works out for me. I quit expecting it to a long time ago, and then I got my life back. And then I got an even better life than I deserve. And now I’m going to have a woman that’s way too good for me too? I don’t know if—“ he cut himself off, and laid his forearm over his eyes. “I just don’t know,” he huffed out.  
  
“Why don’t you deserve it?” LJ asked.  
  
Incredulous, Lincoln sat up suddenly. “Why don’t I deserve it? Holy shit, LJ, do I need to explain it to  _you_ , of all people? You’ve suffered more because of me than anyone, except maybe Michael, but that’s just because you haven’t been around as long as he has.”  
  
“Dad, even if that were true, which it isn’t, isn’t the whole point of this,” LJ raised his hands and indicated their surroundings, “supposed to be a better life, for all of us? Don’t you think Granddad wanted that for you? For Uncle Mike? And for me too, for that matter? You’re over thinking this, which will probably thrill Jane because she doesn’t think you think enough, but this isn’t the time to think. This is the time to do. Do something. Grab what life you can have, make it the life you should have. Stop thinking you deserve to be miserable, and being content with it. We’re supposed to be happy. Not completely without problems, but happy.”  
  
LJ had become somewhat spiritual since his time in therapy, and though he rarely pushed anything about God on his father, Lincoln sensed that this little speech was more about that than it was about therapy or psycho-babble. “What if I marry Sara?” he asked, instead of addressing anything LJ had just said.  
  
“Can I have a baby brother?” LJ countered just as quickly, and that made Lincoln’s breath whoosh right out of him.  
  
Choking on strangled laughter, he responded a moment later, “I suppose that will be up to her.”  
  
“Good, then get her out here so I can start bugging her about it.”  
  


  
  
Michael and Lincoln avoided each other for a couple days, or rather, because Lincoln avoided Michael, Michael was kind enough to reciprocate. But on the third day, Lincoln knocked on his brother’s bedroom door right before he was going to bed. “Come in,” Michael called.  
  
Lincoln entered the room slowly, then closed the door and leaned against it. “Hey,” he said quietly.  
  
Michael was lying on his bed reading a book but he closed it and set it aside. “Hey,” he responded.  
  
“When are you leaving?” Lincoln asked.  
  
“Next Friday.”  
  
“That soon, huh?”  
  
“That long, Linc. I’ve really wanted to do this for awhile, but I had to come here and at least attempt to show you that everything’s all right.”  
  
“What did Sara say when you told her?” The question that had been burning his brain for three days jumped out of his mouth.  
  
Michael raised a brow. “How do you know I told her?”  
  
Lincoln looked down at the carpet. “I heard you and Jane talking the other day.”  
  
“Eavesdropper.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I would have told you, but you ran off and stayed that way.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Linc?”  
  
Lincoln raised his eyes back to Michael’s.  
  
“She didn’t believe me either.” A smile swooped over his face. “See, you two are perfect for each other. Of course, Jane didn’t really believe me either, so I guess it’s fair to say everyone has been reasonably skeptical.”  
  
“Mike, I can’t—“ his throat filled with tears, and Lincoln cleared it nervously. This is why it had taken him so long to come and say anything. He wasn’t even sure he would be able to say anything at all. “I can’t be with her and know it would hurt you. I just can’t. I love you too much, and I’ve already hurt you enough, too much.” Clearing his throat again, he shook his head. “I want it to be real, more than I can ever say, but I can’t—“  
  
“Lincoln. I. Mean. It. I mean it. I want you to be with Sara, and I told her that, and now I’ve told you, and it is up to you. Don’t lay it on me. I will be fine.”  
  
“How? How can you be fine?”  
  
“We’re alive, Linc. We’re alive. It’s all behind us. We’re even, you and me. I’m not holding out for anything more from you except to be my brother, the way it should have always been. Be my brother, not my father, not my protector, not my college-funder, not anything else. Be in love with Sara. Be in love with her, and be with her, or don’t be with her, but don’t use me as the excuse. You said that to me once, remember, that you coulda been the guy with Veronica? Do you remember saying that?”  
  
“Yeah, I remember.”  
  
“Well, you don’t get to say that to me about Sara. Either you are the guy with her, or you choose not to be. There’s none of that ‘coulda been’ crap.”  
  
“I don’t know.” It seemed to be the only thing he could consistently say, and he was beginning to annoy even himself.  
  
“You don’t have to decide right now. But you will have to decide soon.”  
  
Lincoln moved toward the bed his brother lay on, only to shuffle to a stop uncertainly. “I’ll miss you,” he said, though those words didn’t touch on what he felt in depth or breadth by even a small degree.  
  
“I’ll be back,” Michael said softly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.  
  
“You promise?” Lincoln asked.  
  
“If I do, will you believe me?” Michael asked, getting to his feet to meet Lincoln in the middle of the room when it was obvious Lincoln either couldn’t or wouldn’t move any farther.  
  
“Yes. Yes, I’ll believe you.”  
  
Michael opened his arms and Lincoln stepped into them, his hands gripping Michael t-shirt hard as he pulled him close. “I promise I’ll come back, Lincoln. I promise.”  
  
Then he cried. He let his baby brother hold him while he shed tears of happiness, and sadness, for years of abandonment, and years of togetherness and for a future that was still uncertain, but perhaps more abundant in assurance than any of the ones that preceded it combined.  
  


  
  
  
The day Michael was flying out of LAX to Panama, Lincoln was searching the house for his sunglasses, but he couldn’t find them anywhere. He’d already combed his truck from top to bottom, looked in LJ’s car, looked in Michael’s car, had called Jane and got her voice mail to ask if he’d left them in her car the day before when they’d gone to the movies, but he couldn’t find them anywhere.  
  
“Come on, Dad, Uncle Mike’s got to be there by 5 o’clock. If we don’t leave now, we’re not going to make it!”  
  
“I still can’t find them,” he raged, walking up the hall from his bedroom.  
  
“Then you’ll just have to squint until you can find them, because we have got to go!” LJ said, not trying to hide his annoyance at all.  
  
“Fine!” Lincoln barked, following his son out the door.  
  
Michael was putting the last of his luggage into the trunk of LJ’s car. “Don’t forget to drive my car once in awhile, so it will still work when I get back.”  
  
“Quit reminding me!” LJ said. “It’s going to be sitting right there at the curb, I’ll see it all the time. I’ll probably just take it every other week or something.”  
  
“Good,” Michael said, opening the passenger side door. “Shotgun!” he called as Lincoln came around the car, sunglass-less.  
  
“Snarky bastard,” Lincoln spit.  
  
“Oh, come on, the sun would hurt your eyes in the front seat anyway,” Michael joked.  
  
“Shut up,” he snapped, reaching for the back door handle.   
  
“No fighting, you two,” LJ chided, as he opened the driver’s side door.  
  
They were each poised to climb into the blue Honda Civic when a car they didn’t recognize pulled into the driveway behind Lincoln’s truck, which was parked to the left of LJ’s car. Lincoln dipped his head, wondering who it was, but he couldn’t see very well from the far side of the driveway. He heard Michael say, under his breath, “It’s about damn time.”  
  
“What?” he asked.  
  
“It’s for you,” he said, looking over at Lincoln before looking back at the white Chevy. Lincoln felt his jaw drop when the driver’s side door opened and Sara climbed out of the car.  
  
She looked over at all of them and asked, “Going somewhere?” She smiled, but Lincoln could see the nervousness in her lips as they stretched to accommodate the expression.  
  
“LJ and I are,” Michael said. “Linc’s gonna stay.” Lincoln felt Michael’s hand wrap around his arm and pull him away from the car so he could shut the back door.  
  
“Hi, Sara!” LJ said with obvious enthusiasm. He ran around her rental car and hugged her.  
  
“Hey, LJ,” she said, hugging him in return. “Where are you guys off to?”  
  
“Uncle Mike’s going to Panama.”  
  
“Oh, yeah?” she asked, looking over at Michael before her eyes flitted briefly to Lincoln.  
  
“Yeah,” Michael said. “I thought maybe you had decided not to come, but I’m glad I got to see you before I left.” He still had his hand around Lincoln’s arm, and he pulled him around LJ’s car, but then let him go so he could move over and hug Sara goodbye too.  
  
Lincoln thought he said something in her ear, because she nodded, and she blinked, like perhaps tears were stinging her eyes. But she was still 15 feet from him, so he couldn’t tell for sure.  
  
“I’ll stay at the airport with Uncle Mike as long as I can, but I’ll be back after that, Dad,” LJ said, moving back to his car. His hand slapped Lincoln’s shoulder and then he checked his watch. “Probably about 10 tonight, that’s when I’ll be back. I’ll call you if I’m going to be later.”  
  
“Okay,” Lincoln said, surprised he could utter even that much.  
  
“See ya later, Sara,” LJ said, grinning from ear to ear as he got into his car.  
  
Lincoln watched while Michael lifted a hand in farewell to Sara and then he caught Lincoln in a quick, hard hug. “It’s up to you, Linc,” he whispered in his ear. “I’ll call you when I get to where I’m going.”  
  
Lincoln hugged his brother but his eyes were on Sara, who had looked away, as though she were giving them a private moment. “I love you, Michael,” he said softly.  
  
“I know,” Michael said. “I love you, too.” Easing back, Michael smiled and clapped Lincoln’s back in one sharp slap. “I’ll call you,” he repeated.  
  
“You better.”  
  
Lincoln stayed, standing where he was, waiting as Michael climbed in the car and LJ backed it down the driveway. As they pulled up the street, Michael rolled his window down and hung his head out the window. “What are you waiting for, you moron? Kiss her already!”  
  
Sara started laughing, and Lincoln gave Michael the bird.  
  
Yeah, everything was magically setting itself right in Lincoln’s life, and he hoped to hell he never woke up if it was all just one big, long dream.  
  


  
  
As soon as Michael and LJ were far enough up the road that Lincoln was sure they weren’t coming back for any last minute forgotten items, he had Sara stripped naked and straddling his lap on the sofa in the living room. He was equally naked and between her legs faster than either of them could have guessed, but at the same moment not fast enough, and when they were panting in the violent aftermath, he whispered into her hair, “A condom would have been very handy here, so as not to have to clean up the mess, wouldn’t it?” Sara murmured in her throat, but didn’t lift her head from his shoulder. Lincoln swept a hand up her back and grabbed a handful of her hair, tugging her face back so he could kiss her lips again. “Or we shoulda just gone to my room, so then it wouldn’t be public knowledge what we did if we didn’t clean it up right away.”  
  
“I asked for a tour for a reason. I thought we’d end up in your room and that would be a great place to…you know, but you got a little excited here in the living room for some reason,” she said lazily, her lips pressed to his.  
  
“Excited is the right word. I couldn’t wait to be inside you again, especially since until about 20 minutes ago, I didn’t know for sure if I ever would be again.”  
  
“Michael didn’t tell you I was coming?”  
  
“Coming?” he asked, smirking at her.  
  
“Outta the gutter, Burrows. We need to have a serious conversation.” She sat back a little, but his hands tightened on her back and her ass, holding her in place. “I should probably get dressed so you’re not easily distracted.”  
  
“You’re not getting dressed until 10 o’clock tonight, when LJ gets home. Until then, I’m keeping you as naked as the day you were born.” Lincoln leaned forward a bit and caught her bottom lip between his teeth. “Come on, baby,” he whispered, sliding his hands up her back and around her ribcage to cup her breasts. Strumming his fingers over her nipples, he smiled and let her bottom lip slip free from his love bite when her head fell back and her hands rose up to grip desperately at his biceps. “Now, who’s distracted?” he asked, pinching her nipples gently, causing her moan sharply.  
  
That sound alone was enough to revive his cock and he swore softly as she shifted her hips to accommodate his swelling organ. “Sara,” he gasped. “I could fuck you until the end of time and still not get enough.”  
  
Sara’s hands slid up to his shoulders, gripping his skin with sharp fingernails. “We need to talk about something important,” she said breathlessly, lifting herself up slightly on her knees before coming back down on him.  
  
“It can wait,” he assured her, flexing under her as she lifted up again. Keeping his hands on her breasts, he fondled her nipples with the same slow movement she used over him. She keened his name and threw her head back again, this time so much so that her hair trailed over his thighs. The teasing whisper of that against his skin and the need in her voice drove him to the edge and he suddenly dropped his hands to her hips, pulling her down into him hard before pushing her up again. Within a few moments his hands and her knees worked with the precision of a machine to bring them both to shattering, explosive climaxes, and that was saying something considering how explosive their first time had been. “Holy shit,” he wheezed a moment later when he could speak again. “You’d think we weren’t ever going to get a chance to do this again, and that’s why we’re going at it like animals, but that was how it was supposed to be a month ago.”  
  
“Five weeks,” Sara said softly, her head back on his shoulder, resting comfortably. “It’s been five weeks, and two days since we made love.”  
  
“But who’s counting, right?” Lincoln chuckled.  
  
Sara lifted her head and cupped his face in her hands. “Before anything else happens, I have to tell you something,” she said, determination in her eyes.  
  
“Michael didn’t tell me you were coming. I think he wanted me to go get you. And I was planning on it, after he left.”  
  
“He said he’s going to figure out what he’s doing with his life. Is everything all right between you two?”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. Don’t worry.”  
  
“That’s what he said. Exactly. Don’t worry.”  
  
“It took me a while, but I believe him.”  
  
“I’m glad.”  
  
“Me, too.”  
  
Her fingers caressed his face, gently tracing the line of his jawbone and then feathering over his cheeks, dusting his lips with soft touches, too. “I need to tell you something,” she whispered.  
  
“So you keep saying,” he replied, kissing her fingers as the buzzed past his lips again.  
  
“Five weeks and two days ago, I should have told you something, really important.”  
  
“What’s that?” he asked when she paused long enough to make him think she needed the prompting.  
  
“Um…” she cleared her throat and looked up at the painting that hung over the sofa then were on. Then tears filled her eyes and she shook her head. “I’m selfish at heart, Lincoln. You have to know that about me before we make a go of this.” His hands reached up to imitate hers, cupping her cheeks and swiping at the tears overflowing from her eyelids. “I’m mean, and selfish, and I’ll probably do things that make you want to strangle me.”  
  
Lincoln frowned and said, “Shouldn’t I be saying this? I’m the man in this relationship, after all.”  
  
Sara smiled through her tears and hiccupped a little. “I love you, so much. You know that, right?”  
  
“Sara, are you dying or something? You’re starting to freak me out here.”  
  
“When we made love five weeks and two days ago, I was ovulating.”  
  
He looked into her brown eyes and it took a moment. The word  _ovulating_  wasn’t one he’d ever used, nor was it common to his vocabulary. He knew what it meant, of course, but the context took a moment to catch up the circumstances. Quietly, he asked, “And?”  
  
“And I didn’t tell you even though I should have, and now I’m pregnant.”  
  
He took a gasping breath of surprise, even though what she would say had been apparent, and examined her face closely. “But you’re crying because…?”  
  
A startled look ran across her face and her eyes darted back to his. “Well, here I am, pregnant, without having discussed it with you. I knew, the minute you were there. I mean, I couldn’t know you would show up right then, but I could have said we needed birth control, and I didn’t. I did it on purpose.”  
  
He looked at her for a long time without saying anything, but finally he said, as a statement, not a question, “You were  _never_  going to tell me.”  
  
She nodded and more tears spilled over her eyelashes. “Until Michael showed up to tell me he was okay with it, my intent was if I ended up pregnant, it would be my baby and I would raise it. And you would never know. That was my intent.” She said the words quickly, like they were bullets she had to discharge from a gun into someone who was about to kill her. “I’m sorry,” she finished, with barely a whisper of sound.  
  
Lincoln was too close to her to not be able to see, actually feel, the depth of her misery, and her fear that somehow the monkey wrench in this whole thing between them would be the last thing she had done, thinking she would never see him again. But it was a little overwhelming for him and he couldn’t formulate a response right away.  
  
“I thought if it was all I could have, I’d just take it, you know?” she said when he didn’t say anything. “I’d take it, and give it all the love I couldn’t give you. I know, I’m like every bad B movie you’ve ever seen, but it was a split second decision. I would never have had any regrets if it weren’t for Michael, showing up and being all forgiving. Damn him,” she whispered with a small laugh. “He keeps messing everything up for me.”  
  
“Or, maybe…he keeps setting everything right for you. He’s like that, in his strange way, he can make things better. He somehow makes them the way they were always supposed to be.” His hand slid into her hair, cupping the back of her head, pulling her lips close to his again. “So you’re pregnant, huh?”  
  
She nodded and her lips rubbed against his with the movement. “Is it any wonder, with how we were that night?” she asked. “If I hadn't gotten pregnant, I would have been astounded.”  
  
“And disappointed?” he asked.  
  
“Very disappointed,” she confirmed.  
  
Kissing her thoroughly, Lincoln felt something attack his heart in a new way. Most likely, he should be mad. That would be the right reaction, but joy filled him, and a certain measure of pure, blind fear. Pulling her tight against him in a hug, he said, “It doesn’t matter now. We’re together, and all of that is  _that_. It’s over. We’re together. We’re in this for the long haul, and babies now or later, really doesn’t matter.”  
  
“You don’t care?” she asked sniffily.  
  
“Of course, I care. If I’d found out, I’d have torn you a new one, but that’s neither here nor there, is it? You’re here, with me, and that’s all that matters now. LJ will be thrilled. He just asked me last week for a baby brother.”  
  
“I’m not making any promises,” she said, snuggling her face into the curve of his shoulder.  
  
“Well, if we failed to make a boy this time, there’s always try, try again.” She laughed, a watery little sound against his skin, and Lincoln smoothed his hands down her back. “I love you, Sara. And even though this terrifies me, I’m trying hard to be positive it’s gonna work.”  
  
“It will work,” she said around a yawn. “The best part about being selfish? You never let things go that you really want. Now that I’m here, Lincoln Burrows, you’re stuck with me, forever.”  
  
The love overcame the fear in that moment. He felt it swell though his chest and obliterate every other emotion. It was strangely like freedom. “In that case? Uh, let’s move this party to the bedroom, okay?”  



	20. Fate and Happiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost forgot this story had an epilogue from Michael's POV! Guest appearance by Fernando Sucre.

“What else does it say?”

 

“Sara’s been having false labor. Linc’s acting like he’s all cool with that, but I imagine he’s been more panicky than the mother-to-be.” Michael’s eyes continued to scan the information on the computer screen. “Oh, here is it. Jane’s getting married on November 15th.” Michael looked over his shoulder at his companion. “That gives me plenty of time to find a good round-trip flight.”

 

“How do you think they’ll take it when you say you’re coming back to Panama?”

 

Michael exited from his email account and shifted in the chair so he faced away from the computer. “It won’t be as bad as when I left the first time. Linc knows I love it here, and he finally believes I didn’t come here to run away from his and Sara’s relationship. What’s great about Jane’s wedding is the baby will be here by then. I’ll get to see my new niece or nephew—“

 

“They didn’t find out what it is?”

 

“No, Sara wanted to be surprised. Isn’t that funny? I would’ve never guessed she’d want to be surprised.”

 

“What about Lincoln? Did he want to know?”

 

“He did, but he deferred to Sara. You know Linc, he’s putty in her hands. Whatever she wants, he pretty much does it.”

 

Laughter preceded this statement, “Actually, I do  _know_  Linc, but  _I_  would never have guessed that. I never knew him that well. Being on the run here and there with him didn’t really help me get to know him any better than P.I. did.”

 

Michael smiled, looking thoughtful. “You’re right; you know of Linc, you don’t know him. Which is sort of how I feel when I think about Sara now, too.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Really.”

 

“Honestly?”

 

“Honestly, Fernando. She was my lifeline while I was in prison, getting out and cutting that cord just showed me it wasn’t what I needed to survive. You, you  _needed_  Maricruz. Me, I just needed my brother to be all right.”

 

Fernando Sucre dropped his feet down to the floor from the coffee table he’d had them propped up on. “You’re right,  _papi_. I still need Maricruz, and now I need my little soccer player too. I’m going to go see what they’re up to. I’ll take care of the shop if you want to take the afternoon off.”

 

Michael watched as his best friend walked to the front door of the little cabin that was above the dive shop they co-owned. “You wouldn’t mind?” he asked. “I could look for a good flight, and answer Linc’s email too.”

 

“Go ahead. Maricruz will want to take Tomas home for his afternoon nap, but I can cover until dinner time.” Fernando opened the door, but turned back, looking at Michael quizzically. “Really? You don’t care that the doc and your brother are about to have a baby?”

 

This topic had been off-limits the seven months they’d been in Panama together. Mostly, for Michael, it had been an exercise in making sure he was truly all right with it. He’d had some pretty big pipe dreams about Dr. Tancredi, so it hadn’t been as easy as he’d tried to make her, his brother, and even Jane believe before he’d left California for Panama. But Panama had been its own revelation. Sandy beaches, relaxed attitudes, no high-power business suits nor running for his life scenarios had worked to calm his rather frenetic mind. And at the end of that, he had accepted his brother’s choices as the only possible outcome, simply because it was a waste of time to believe otherwise. “Yeah. I’m fine with it,” he replied. Fernando threw him a wink and then left him alone with his thoughts.

 

He didn’t love Sara; rather he wasn’t  _in_  love with Sara. He loved her quite a lot for the peace she’d brought to Lincoln, for the stability she’d given to his and LJ’s life. And though they hadn’t yet gotten married for some unknown reason, Michael believed they would be together until death separated them.

 

Michael loved her because she’d saved their lives, both figuratively and literally. And the fact that it had been a messed up, painful, dirty process to achieve it only seemed poetic to a couple of orphans whose co-dependent relationship had landed them both in prison.

 

He tapped his long fingers against the keyboard, musing over his own brand of therapy. As someone who had been in and out of therapist offices a great deal of his life, he found irony in the fact that time alone on a beautiful beach had brought more clarity than any amount of talking through his feelings, his disappointments, or his successes despite his crap life, et cetera, ever had. His conclusion had been more about why Lincoln had sold his soul for $90,000 for Michael and why Michael had in turn attempted to sell his own soul for Lincoln’s freedom. It was screwed up. Watching their father die in the same vain attempt at saving them had only solidified his viewpoint. They needed to do more healthy things for each other, more normal things for each other. Less grand gestures, but more small meaningful, loving tokens of their affection.

 

Michael had always needed to know that Lincoln loved him, even when it was obvious Lincoln had. Everything his brother had ever done, had in some way, pointed to this truth, but Michael had been too young, too insecure, and later too superior, to recognize it.

 

Lately, Lincoln had already unconsciously begun this aspect of healing their relationship by emailing Michael almost every day over the last seven months. First the emails had not included any information about Sara, until Michael asked pointed things about her and whether or not she was still in California with Linc and LJ. Then came the emails about impending fatherhood, and all the little details he could manage (that would have embarrassed Sara no doubt had she known that Lincoln was recounting every moment of vomit, bodily changes and mood swings).

 

Then came long letters about his brother’s fears and insecurities, his worries for the future and his desire to live up to the legacy their father had left them, now that they knew the truth. Michael had found they could say things in those long emails to each other that might never have been expressed in person, and it was another reason he loved Panama. He loved his family so much, but being away from them had been the best thing to heal those breaches that neither wanted to admit were there.

 

Then again, you couldn’t fix 30 plus years of dysfunction even in seven wonderful months, and Michael loved Panama. He wanted to stay there, he enjoyed being a part of the Sucres familial bliss, and he’d even met a woman that he liked, a beautiful native Panamanian woman named Dulce Fuentes. He wasn’t ready to call it love or anything, but he liked her, and they got along well, and she was so beautiful, he often lost track of what he was saying because her dark eyes drew him into their fathomless depths.

 

And let’s face it, he’d been in prison, and without, for a long time. That whole Latin lover thing was totally true, and Scofield was reaping the benefits of it hand over fist. Or tongue over mouth. However you wanted to look at it, his relaxation had to be credited to Dulce in some way.

 

As he Googled roundtrip airfares for the third week of November, he knew going back and facing them all was as important as leaving them had been. And he couldn’t wait to see them, really. He would be happy to say all was well when he saw them all in the flesh again.

 

Water under the bridge, ships in the night, and whatever other water clichés there were. Michael Scofield had found his bliss—separate from his brother, in a place he’d once considered a refuge, but now considered home.

 

 

 

 

In the aftermath of Jane’s wedding, which had taken place on the beach in front of the Burrows’ home, Michael and Lincoln took a walk. The festivities had ended, the bride and groom (a federal officer Jane worked with at the Huntington Beach office named Matthew Farrell) had left for their Hawaiian Honeymoon, and Lincoln had taken his newborn son, who was now two weeks old, and strapped him to his chest in a contraption Michael had never seen before that tucked the baby warmly to his father’s body. They set out, the three of them, for a walk with the setting sun.

 

Sara had gratefully surrendered her child, her eyes closing sleepily as she sank down on the sofa next to LJ who was watching a football game. As they walked out the sliding glass door, Michael’s older nephew whispered, “I’m going to Lauren’s later, Dad. I might not be here when you get back.”

 

“Okay,” Lincoln said over his shoulder. “Don’t forget—“

 

“I know, the condoms. You don’t have to say it to me every time I leave the house, you know!” LJ said with some irritation.

 

Lincoln pointed to the squirming baby against his chest and said meaningfully, “Yes, I do.”

 

LJ waved them off, and Michael found himself chuckling as they walked down the steps and out to the water. “Am I wrong?” Lincoln demanded, his voice devoid of the annoyance his words might have contained if the little bundle of joy attached to him was really a source of trouble.

 

Michael chose to be diplomatic. “Of course, you’re right,” he said agreeably. “LJ ought to learn from his father’s mistakes, right?”

 

“That’s what I’m saying,” Lincoln replied grumblingly, but then a grin split his face and he laughed too. “Although, I’m lucky in that my mistakes end up being the best things that ever happen to me.”

 

Michael felt a little blinded by the light of joy in his brother’s face, and as they started moving up the beach, parallel with the ocean, he murmured, “Yeah, how does that work exactly? I need to perfect this technique of yours.”

 

Lincoln’s right hand cupped the baby’s bottom while his left hand alternately rubbed gentle circles or patted the baby’s back until he seemed to settle down, his minor fussing disappearing as he went to sleep. Lincoln glanced up at Michael and shrugged. “If I knew how it worked, I’d write a book. But it’s a fucking mystery to me, too.” With a pensive smile, he nudged Michael’s shoulder with his own. “I’m so glad you’re home, man. Maybe if we spend some time together, we can work it out, you know? Figure it out, what the secret is.”

 

Michael turned his gaze to the frothy water and said softly, “I don’t think we can figure it out, Linc. I think the truth is you’ve had enough bad stuff happen, that it’s finally your turn for good stuff.”

 

Lincoln didn’t respond immediately, but then his voice came back, softer, wiser. “If that’s the case, then it’s about time for that for you, too, don’t you think?”

 

Michael turned his head in surprise. “I’m happy, Linc. It’s already happened for me.”

 

“Are you?” Lincoln asked, a hint of suspicion in his tone. “Are you ready to come home?”

 

Michael sighed and gestured to an outcropping of rocks on their right. “Let’s sit, shall we?” he asked, leading the way over to the flattest of the rocks. “Panama is my home, Linc. Wait—“ he said, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder when Lincoln’s mouth dropped open and words started to push themselves out. “Listen to me, okay? It wasn’t at first. But the longer I’ve been there…the more it has become that. And you have to let me have that, you have to let me be happy there if that’s where I’m happy, just like I had to let you have Sara.”

 

Lincoln couldn’t argue when Michael said something like that, which is why Michael had said it, of course. Since his older brother had been silenced for the time being, he took the opportunity to say the other things that had been weighing on his mind for some time. “You know you’ve always been the love of my life, in a weird way. After mom died, you were all I had, and you were my whole world. But you had Vee, and then you had LJ, and I never had anyone but you. Until Sara. And then I thought maybe she could be the love of my life. But somehow, she became yours.

 

“And I’m not sorry about that, because I look at you together, and I  _know_. And I see you with this little guy…” He stretched a hand out and touched the top of his sleeping nephew’s head. “…And I know, I just know there was no other way it could have worked out. But you know what I figured out, Linc? I figured out that I never had a life, not until I went into Fox River. Everything was just—nothing, really. It doesn’t even require rehashing, it just  _is_. The truth is, until I was fighting for your life, I never cared about mine. And meeting Sara, and feeling what I felt for her shocked me even more awake. That there was something out there that made me feel something  _more_ , you know?” He paused, dropping his hand away from the baby and looking into his brother’s eyes. “I’ve loved you, and only you my whole life. Mom was gone, Dad wasn’t there, and everyone else didn’t register with me. Not until Fox River. Not until Sara, and Fernando. Then I met other people who would do for me what you’d done. Give up everything, sacrifice things that meant the world to them. I never knew there were other people like that for me. I only thought you did stuff like that for me.”

 

“Michael…” Lincoln’s whisper got lost on the sound of the waves as they swept in several yards away from where they sat.

 

“But then Sara hurt me like you’ve hurt me, and it hit me that I’d never allowed anyone to be in my life. I never let anyone hurt me, but I never let anyone love me either. Only you. And that’s not right, because, well, look.” He lifted his hands and indicated everything around them. “I’m not all you need to be happy, so how could you be all I need? But it took me forever to figure that out.”

 

He paused then, the majority of what he had wanted to say resting in the air between them both. Michael looked down at his brother’s bare toes, at how they had sunk into the sand just slightly, but how the tops of Lincoln’s feet were brown with two white stripes where the straps of his flip-flops usually laid. “It took me forever to figure out that there is more to life than Lincoln and Michael,” he said softly. “For me, that will always be the center; there’s no other way for me to be, Linc. But just because you are my core, and where I circle out from, doesn’t mean you have to fill up the other space. In Panama I have a business. Fernando and I have done well for ourselves down there. I have a girlfriend. I’m all right, without you. I look forward to your letters, but I’m not expecting a phone call anymore that tells me your dead somewhere, because you have something better now, you’re different now. It’s almost like we were both in prison—different prisons—but now we’re free. Instead of being tied together, we are linked in a way that allows us to leave and come back and it’s okay. Does any of this make sense to you?” Michael finally asked, feeling as though he might have said way too much, but knowing he couldn’t have done it any other way.

 

Lincoln’s gaze never faltered; his blue eyes remained steady and focused on Michael’s, and then he slowly began nodding. “Yes,” was all he said, and that was enough.

 

Michael had always been the one with the intricate plans and the need to define things. Lincoln had always moved with the flow of life, good or bad, and most of the time he dragged Michael behind him, whether Michael was ready for where the current took them. Ultimately, as they sat there separate but finally equal, it ceased to matter. However it had happened, they were both there now, and it didn’t matter how they’d gotten there, only that they had.

 

“So…” Lincoln cleared his throat and shifted the sleeping baby slightly up. “Will you stay long enough for Sara and I to get married?”

 

“Is that why you aren’t yet, because you wanted me to be there?” Michael asked.

 

Lincoln squinted, turning his gaze back to the ocean. “I couldn’t do it, not until I knew you were really okay. You’re okay. I can feel it now. Baby Mikey needs his parents to be married. He deserves to have that. But I had to make sure Uncle Mike got what he deserved first.”

 

“Lincoln, our fates aren’t dependent on the other’s happiness,” Michael murmured into the wind.

 

Lincoln’s chin jerked towards his brother. “Yes, they are. I could never be happy, not really, if you weren’t.”

 

“Since when does fate and happiness mean the same thing?” Michael asked as he leaned down and scooped up a handful of sand.

 

As the sand trickled through his fingers, hitting his leg and foot sprinkingly, Lincoln said, “If we deserve something good for all the shit we put up with and went through, then our fates could only be one thing: a happy ending.”

 

“Except this isn’t the end, it’s only the beginning.”

 

“Then that was our fate, a happy beginning. But it had to come for both of us, and it had to start at sort of the same time. I think Dad knew that. That’s why he came back when he did. It was time.”

 

Michael nodded as the last of the sand fell through his fingers. Dusting his palm against the material of his shorts, he stood up. “Should we go see when Sara’s available to marry you?”

 

Lincoln looked down at Michael Aldo Tancredi-Burrows and brushed his lips against the fuzzy cap of ginger-colored hair on the baby’s small skull. Then he stood up and smiled at his brother. “It’s time.”

 


End file.
